In the people-focused world of social services, tech is making inroads to ease burnout

After an hour-long meeting with an elderly client, Ms Sheron Chng had to write a lengthy “case note” documenting the entire interaction and her observations about the woman’s struggles and problems – standard protocol for social workers like her.

Except this time, Ms Chng, 34, had recorded their conversation using Scribe, an artificial intelligence (AI) tool on her cell phone.

Even though they had spoken in a mix of English, Mandarin and Singlish, it generated a summary of the multilingual transcript almost perfectly – and that served as her first draft.

The final version of her case notes took her only half an hour to complete, compared to about 60 minutes previously, when she had to transcribe everything manually.

The amount of time saved might not appear significant, but with anywhere from 20 to 50 clients under a social worker’s care at any given time, the hours quickly add up.

Ms Chng was among a group of senior social workers at charity organisation Care Corner who was trying out Scribe for three weeks, and the feedback was unanimously positive.

This led Care Corner to decide to roll out the tool for organisation-wide use later this month – a prime example of how technology adoption is slowly but surely permeating Singapore’s social service sector.

These new tech tools not only ultimately benefit the people in need but also help alleviate the well-documented workload challenges that social workers face.

Meanwhile, Lions Befrienders, a social service agency providing care for seniors, uses a suite of tech-enabled tools for preventative healthcare known as LB Tech Care, which saves the agency’s 115 frontline staff, including 10 social workers, a lot of time and resources.

Its frontliners and volunteers used to make house visits to seniors who live alone once every one to two weeks to check on their health and well-being.

Now, these elderly clients can tap a simple button on a tablet device, dubbed “IM-OK”, to indicate that they are safe and well.

The tool saves the social workers a physical trip to the clients' homes and allows them to allocate more time to the seniors who need more dedicated care, said the agency’s executive director, Ms Karen Wee.

The importance of technology in shaping the social service profession through education and skills development was highlighted by Minister for National Development Desmond Lee at a symposium organised by the Department of Social Work at the National University of Singapore (NUS) last November.

Mr Lee, who is also the Minister-in-charge for Social Services Integration, said that a tighter integration of support systems is necessary to address the nation’s growing complexity of social issues.

This complexity is in part due to Singapore experiencing key demographic changes, such as a rapidly ageing population and smaller family units, said the National Council of Social Service (NCSS).

By 2030, around one in four Singaporeans will be aged 65 or above, up from one in 10 in 2010. Families are also shrinking, from 3.5 persons in 2010 to about 3.11 persons in 2023.

As data and technology continue to permeate different facets of society, CNA TODAY explores the innovative ways they are being applied in the social service sector, and their impact on both workers and beneficiaries.

USING TECH TO BE MORE HUMAN

For many in the sector, social work is not just a job but a calling to help society’s less fortunate. Yet, as CNA reported in 2022, social workers here have been suffering burnout largely due to the increased caseloads resulting from the pandemic.

It was concern over their social workers' exhaustion that prompted Lions Befrienders to explore tech solutions like “IM-OK” with urgency, said Ms Wee.

“It’s about the preservation of resources. We didn’t integrate technology because it was fun. We did this out of necessity. We were all burning out,” she said.

According to Mr Yoganathan Ammayappan, the deputy chief executive officer of NCSS, manpower shortage remains a key challenge faced by the sector.

There are now more than 20,000 social service professionals in the sector, which is an increase from over 18,000 in 2019. But to meet growing demand, the sector needs about 2,000 more professionals over the next five years, he said. 

Given the intensity of the need, every little bit of ease that can be gained from technology helps. Take Scribe, for example. Though it may seem far from cutting-edge given how advanced AI tech is these days, it has had a significant impact on the load of the social workers who use it.

Paperwork, such as writing up case notes, is an essential part of a social worker's job and can take up a significant portion of their work day, with many putting in overtime to complete them.

Ms Shannon Sim, 33, who has worked at multiple social service agencies since 2018, manages 40 to 50 cases at her current workplace, a hospice. The social worker spends 45 minutes to an hour doing up the case notes after each meeting with a patient.

Ms Sim also has other ad-hoc projects to work on, and occasionally has to cover the cases left behind by her colleagues who are on leave. This makes the workload overwhelming, she said.

In addition to easing the paperwork, tech tools like Scribe are also useful in other ways.

Some newer social workers may have a tendency to prioritise note-taking for fear of missing out vital information, said Ms Chng of Care Corner.

This, in turn, may give the wrong signals to the clients, making them feel like they are not heard.

“The AI reduces the stress of remembering key information from our conversation and gives us more bandwidth to attend to the client and be present with them,” she added.

Furthermore, the AI tool helps to free up the social worker’s headspace to implement other techniques in their work.

“We have to apply technical skills in a session, remember what they are telling us, and ensure there’s an emotional connectedness to the client – all at the same time,” Ms Chng said.

Scribe also makes preliminary assessments of the client’s responses to the social worker’s statements, for example, analysing that the client appeared “coherent” in their understanding of their discharge plans.

This opens up new perspectives for the social worker to make the case notes more comprehensive, Ms Chng said.

Seeing issues in a new light is also something Mr Benjamin Ho, a senior social worker at Thye Hua Kwan Moral Charities (THKMC), has encountered through his own exploration of AI for his work.

“If a client comes to me with marital issues, and I run the scenario through an AI prompt, it might recommend that I look at how external family issues might be influencing the couple’s dynamics,” he said.

“It helps me reflect upon my work, as if AI plays the role of a clinical assistant.”

This potential for AI tools to support social workers’ professional training has also been identified by NUS’ social work faculty.

Assistant Professor Gerard Chung from NUS told CNA TODAY that an “AI-powered role-playing simulation tool” is being piloted for its social work students in two social work courses at the university. 

This tool can help them sharpen their skills through an “experiential” opportunity, by improving the questions they ask or dealing with different types of scenarios such as child abuse or suicide, he said.

Another AI tool known as Schemes.sg, which comes in the form of a chatbot, was created to aid social workers and vulnerable groups themselves find and access information on a whole trove of assistance schemes in Singapore.

Users can simply type out some identifying information, what help they need, and the chatbot matches beneficiaries with the most relevant schemes based on their specific needs. It can also help to answer any questions users have about each scheme without leaving the webpage.

For those who do not read or write in English, the tool is also able to translate the information into different languages.

It was built by volunteers and supported by Better.sg, a ground-up initiative to encourage the use of technology in aid of progressing social causes.

Eugene Kim, the volunteer project lead for Schemes.sg, said that social workers have given them feedback that it is incredibly useful as a resource to help their clients, as they are not able to remember and know all the possible schemes available.

In other instances, technology can help save lives.

A large part of Lions Befrienders' suite of tech tools involves preventative healthcare.

One AI-based software that it uses at its centres, dubbed "IM-Happy", assesses the facial emotions of seniors in real time, which allows early detection of clients who may have mental or emotional needs and concerns.

Another application that the agency uses, called CognICA, detects mild cognitive disorders and dementia in seniors with an accuracy rate of over 90 per cent, enabling prompt intervention to mitigate potential deterioration or health complications.

Ms Wee of Lions Befrienders noted that client-facing technology in the social service sector must be easy to use, especially when it comes to helping seniors. 

"When they know how to use (the technology tool), they aren't freaked out by it and are more inclined to want to use it to their own benefit. Then they feel empowered and in charge of their lives," she said.

CASES NOT SO STRAIGHTFORWARD ANYMORE

The adoption of such tech tools to help them with the simpler and more routine tasks of their job is especially critical as the cases they handle are becoming ever more complicated, social workers said.

For instance, cases pertaining to mental health struggles now make up a large part of their portfolio.

Ms Claryl Ho, a medical social worker at the National University Hospital (NUH), said that she has noticed more adolescents, some as young as 11, getting admitted to the hospital due to self-harm and various mental health issues over the past year.

“They would overdose on drugs like paracetamol or cough syrup after going through fights with their parents or friends, relationship problems or bullying in school,” said the 27-year-old.

“I think it’s quite sad that these children feel like they don’t have much to look forward to in life, so much so that they try to end their life.”

Likewise, Mr Asher Low, founder of the mental health non-profit Limitless, said there has been a “significant” rise in young adults aged 18 to 24 seeking help through his organisation’s programmes and support groups.

He estimated that there was about a 250 per cent increase from 2020 to 2021 during the pandemic, and a 15 per cent increase each year between 2022 and 2024.

The social workers’ observations are consistent with a recent mental health study on youths in Singapore, where around one in three reported experiencing severe or extremely severe symptoms of depression, anxiety or stress.

The research, led by the Institute of Mental Health, involved face-to-face interviews with 2,600 people aged between 15 and 35 years old, and was published in September last year.

Social workers also shared concerns over a lack of social support for another growing group – parents now in their 30s to 50s – who, on the whole, have fewer children who can care for them should they develop a medical condition.

Ms Sim, the hospice social worker, has seen her fair share of these parents where she works.

She said: “Compared to the older population, this group tends to have fewer children. If one child is unable to provide support, they don’t have much help anymore.”

Ms Gina Lin, the head of Care Corner’s innovation squad, also noted that the types of cases the agency sees are no longer as “one-dimensional” as they used to be in the 1980s, when Care Corner was set up.

“Back then, the cases we saw tended to be mostly finance-related. Now, we’re seeing a lot more issues pertaining to caregiving troubles, domestic violence and mental health,” she said, adding that a combination of these issues may surface in a single household.

“From a family perspective, it’s almost like you are aimed with a machine gun (of problems) coming from all angles.”

SHARING DATA THE WAY TO GO 

Given the evolving nature of social issues, social workers said what they really want to see is Singapore’s social service agencies sharing data with each other effectively. 

Each agency often has limitations on the services it can offer, and it is not uncommon for families and individuals to seek help from multiple agencies all at once.

As such, sharing information – often in the form of case notes – can help these agencies determine the best way to assist people in need.

At present, the social service agencies use several government-initiated platforms designed to facilitate this sharing, including:

• SSNet ONE: A platform that collates and stores client information gathered from social service agencies
• One ClientView (OneCV): A platform that gives a frontline officer assessing a case a comprehensive view of the person's information and assistance history
• CaseConnect: A coordination platform that allows frontline officers and case workers to make referrals to other agencies, share assessments and updates

Social workers said that these platforms have thus far been helpful in their day-to-day work.

For Ms Ho of NUH, for instance, her job mostly involves providing patients with financial assistance for their medical bills.

However, to help these patients apply for subsidies, issues occasionally arise – such as patients not knowing the details of estranged family members.

With the patient’s consent, OneCV helps Ms Ho retrieve the necessary information without having to contact the estranged relatives.

Having access to data enables the sector to be more forward-looking in planning services through data analytics, said Mr Yoganathan of NCSS.

It can also better identify at-risk groups and plan upstream preventive and developmental programmes.

But those in the social service said that not all social work practitioners are using these platforms, and getting all social service agencies to get on board is quite a mammoth task, too: There are over 500 agencies registered with the NCSS. 

Asst Prof Chung of NUS said that while many in the sector are eager to use technology and data, some still require convincing.

“The uncertainty about its effectiveness, the long-term costs and the ethical issues surrounding technology has led to some caution in exploring its use or its adoption,” he said.

“This is understandable as social work professionals seek to ensure that service delivery is not compromised by the unintended consequences of technology.”

As a solution to this, Asst Prof Chung said that a group called the Social Work Informatics and Technology Champions, or Switch, was formed in 2024 to promote a better understanding of the possibilities and benefits of tech and AI in the field.

But there is still a need for social workers who are keen to play the role of “technology translators” to manage the implementation and adoption of new tech.

Some agencies, such as Care Corner, have taken it upon themselves to create their own management dashboard that consolidates all the data gathered across the organisation.

In Care Corner’s case, the dashboard, which they started to utilise last month, is able to track the agency’s key performance indicators across over a hundred social service programmes.

“When the data is transparent and visible, we can better identify gaps and better decide what actions need to be taken,” said Ms Lin.

Care Corner is in the process of integrating an additional AI layer on top of the platform, which would enable its social workers to recognise key emerging issues and common clients across their service points, and track the overall impact of their work on beneficiaries.

Those in the sector hope that sharing positive data on the efficacy and effectiveness of community-based services can also help encourage people to step forward and receive the support they need. 

Take Viriya Psychological Services, for example, which provides clinical psychological assessments and standardised treatments in the community.

Dr Timothy Singham, its senior clinical psychologist and manager, said that the agency recently shared the clinical data it had collected over the past few years on its social media platforms and publicly at the International Allied Health Conference 2024 in November, where over 1,100 industry partners had gathered.

Such sharing of clinical data is not a common practice in the sector.

“We found that 60 to 70 per cent of our clients reliably improve during their time with us, and that these improvement rates could be achieved within approximately 12 sessions," he said.

“We hope this can help increase awareness of community-based psychological services, to help people know that our service is designed for them, and to encourage them to step forward to receive the psychological support that they need in the community setting."

STILL A HUMAN-CENTRIC PROFESSION

Despite the conveniences that technology has afforded them, social workers said they still have plenty on their plates, given that their profession is centred on people.

Meeting clients can be “quite stressful”, said Ms Sim from the hospice, adding that the stress becomes particularly pronounced for newbies, as a social worker’s responsibilities include identifying the often-subtle cues that indicate a client is "high-risk".

Such high-risk clients are considered to have an elevated likelihood of experiencing harm or causing harm to themselves.

“The biggest challenge is really to manage our own anxiety. High-risk cases are very serious, and we need to look at them seriously because it’s our responsibility.

“It can often be life or death,” Ms Sim said.

The need to be attuned to their clients’ emotional cues can sometimes bleed into one’s personal life as well – an “occupational hazard”, said Mr Ho from THKMC.

“Even when we’re not at work, we tend to read cues in our personal lives that aren’t really there too – we (over-analyse) our loved ones’ actions but we don’t recognise that the context is different.”

Mr Ho added that the unpredictability inherent in a social worker’s job is something technology cannot address.

He recalled being assigned to meet a client at a rental flat who needed housing-related assistance in 2017. The client, a middle-aged Singaporean woman, had developmental issues and could only understand basic Mandarin.

While trying to obtain more information about her circumstances, Mr Ho discovered something else: The woman had a cohabitant with similar cognitive impediments, and their relationship was often physically violent.

It was one of the most challenging cases he had ever encountered.

“You have to think on your feet, and you have to be prepared for anything,” Mr Ho said.

“Technology itself is a wonderful thing, but it cannot and should not replace human interaction.”