Earlier this year, Prime Minister Lawerence Wong delivered his 2026 Budget entitled “Securing our Future Together in a Changed World”. While not containing many new disability-specific announcements, PM Wong briefly highlighted the interministerial taskforce on assurance for families with persons with disabilities which was launched in December 2025.
The taskforce aims to put together a set of recommendations pertaining to employment, community living, and affordability. It focuses on the theme of “assurance” due to common feedback of how services need to be more streamlined across the lifespan or life-course such as better addressing support for persons with disabilities after the school years (a gap known as the “post-18 cliff”).
The launch of the taskforce thus poses an important and interesting question of what does it mean to provide “assurance” to persons with disabilities. The target of the taskforce on a cross-lifespan approach is an important one. However, from our conversations with persons with disabilities over the years, providing “assurance” needs to also ensure that everyday spaces are accessible and inclusive.
To be clear, providing assurance must also include targeted and curated approaches and services especially for persons with disabilities with higher support needs. Such approaches are also necessary generally in the short-term as Singapore slowly develops its everyday spaces and infrastructure to be inclusive.
Having noted this, providing “assurance” to persons with disabilities and family members of persons with disabilities needs to include and ensure that important investments and developments in our country are as inclusive as possible of persons with disabilities from the get-go. It has to include protocols and measures to ensure that persons with disabilities are not only consulted, but are co-leaders, alongside other demographics, in shaping and securing our shared future together in a changed and changing world.
The SWDA
For example, as we have previously noted, key and ongoing investments such as in lifelong learning and our employment landscape need to be inclusive of disabled realities to ensure such investments can positively impact all Singaporeans as equitably as possible.
The upcoming Skills and Workforce Development Agency (SWDA) – a merger between SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG) and Workforce Singapore (WSG) aims to better streamline training development and employment placements. Instead of having to navigate two separate agencies, the government intends for the upcoming SWDA to combine services such as employment coaching and upskilling and re-skilling navigation into one agency with the aims of bettering employment prospects post-training development.
Yet, for the upcoming SWDA to work well for as many Singaporeans as possible, it needs to be designed to address the realities faced by historically-marginalised groups such as persons with disabilities.
For example, for many, the process of re-skilling can already be a significant commitment. While there are substantial government subsidies and investments to assist, it can still require notable investments of one’s time. However, for groups such as persons with disabilities, such concerns are more pronounced. Persons with disabilities often face additional barriers in skills and training development – such as transport-related barriers and inconsistent provision of reasonable accommodation in training opportunities.
The repeated transition between training and employment, which are often part of upskilling and re-skilling, can thus be particularly taxing for persons with disabilities especially if such barriers remain.
However, it is currently unclear how the upcoming SWDA will address such current barriers. For example, earlier this month, Parliament convened for its May sitting – and amongst several items, met to pass a bill to establish the SWDA. The bill mainly addresses the technical aspects of the SWDA’s establishment – such as specifics around its organisational management. During the bill’s second reading, when asked about how the government aims to optimise the upcoming SWDA for historically-marginalised populations such as persons with disabilities, the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) replied that they plan to work with SG Enable, but did not provide specifics of such plans.
SSG and SG Enable have taken important steps through available resources to encourage provision of reasonable accommodation – including grants such as the capability development grant (CDG) which training providers can tap on should accommodations require any financial costs.
However, SWDA would be a timely and important opportunity for the government to go beyond a mere encouragement-based approach when addressing how important reasonable accommodations are provided.
Curated approaches such as that through the Enabling Academy have their place, but establishing strong and clear standards, frameworks, and requirements to assess and provide reasonable accommodations in mainstream lifelong learning will better assure and optimise training opportunities.
We outline the importance of such standards, frameworks, and requirements in a 2024 position paper.
The establishment of SWDA also presents an opportunity for the government to optimise and refine important targets pertaining to gainful employment.
Currently, according to the Enabling Masterplan 2030 (EMP2030), the government envisions a 2030 landscape where persons with disabilities are “gainfully employed”, and has set the target of achieving 40% employment rate of persons with disabilities by 2030.
As we have previously highlighted, while this is a commendable goal, persons with disabilities often view “gainful employment” to encompass more than the presence of employment. Persons with disabilities, just like our non-disabled peers, often hope our skills, talents, expertise are utilised in employment, and that we can have opportunities to advance and progress in our spheres of interest. It is no surprise that such aspects of employment were commonly voiced as important to gainful employment in our conversations within the disability community over the years.
The upcoming SWDA must thus firstly seek to ensure that their alignment efforts between skills development and employment outcomes are not defined narrowly by industry demand, but also to optimise current and existing skills and competencies of the individual. This will minimise the need for upskilling and re-skilling – thus reducing prospects of persons with disabilities having to navigate additional barriers.
Secondly, the upcoming SWDA also should seek to utilise indicators such as under-employment and employment retention – amongst others –in measuring the success of their programmes and services.
The establishment of SWDA comes at a timely point for disability policy in Singapore. 2026 marks the halfway point of EMP2030. Unlike previous EMPs, EMP2030 is an eight-year plan. Given the length of the current EMP, it would be timely for the government to look to adjust targets to better capture intended outcomes. The government has previously noted that the EMP is a “live plan”, and that they are open to adjustments. We thus recommend that indicators such as under-employment and employment retention be included in EMP2030 targets in addition to the 40% employment rate objective.
The upcoming SWDA will thus be an opportunity for the government to better address existing barriers in training, while adjusting metrics of monitoring progress to better ensure and assure gainful employment prospects for persons with disabilities.
A “Life-course” approach
Taking a “lifespan” or “cross-life-course” approach to disability policy is important. Investing in targeted services to alleviate anxieties especially in life transitions is necessary.
However, similar to the points on the upcoming SWDA, targeted services are just one aspect. Persons with disabilities and family members with persons with disabilities will be better assured if we live in a society that embraces a dignified view of disability.
This is why it is important to address how we as a society think about and discuss disability and inclusion. Currently, there is still too much focus on persons with disabilities as objects of inspiration or merely as beneficiaries – which is harmful as such narratives do not focus on the root of the issue which are societal barriers. Often times public awareness campaigns are still unfortunately based on vague notions of empathy rather than on best principles and standards of inclusion and rights protections such as that found in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD).
This is why one of our recommendations to the taskforce is for the Character and Citizenship Education (CCE) curriculum in mainstream schools to be amended to better teach such important principles. When children and youth – especially those without disabilities – learn or internalise inaccurate perceptions of disability over their schooling years, they inevitably take those inaccurate perceptions and biases with them into adulthood and into the workplace. What results are workplaces and workplace policies that are directly and indirectly shaped by inaccurate perceptions of disability and inclusion – making it more difficult for persons with disabilities to enter the workforce on an equitable basis.
On the theme of a “cross-life-course” approach, it should include acknowledging that disability occurs across all age groups and manifest in different ways – both apparent and non-apparent. Yet, as illustrated over the last few years with public conversations on the use of personal mobility aids (PMAs), Singaporeans – including prominent figures and policymakers – have unfortunately tended to speak of disability only in reference to seniors – i.e. identifying a potential errant PMA user simply because the user was “young” and “seemingly able-bodied”.
In addition to discussions around disability, opportunities must be optimised to address disabled realities across life phases.
Amongst our young, while there have been significant investments in the special education (SPED) sector, it is just as important for mainstream schools to be optimised for accessibility and inclusivity to ensure as many students with and without disabilities can study, play, and discover the world equitably alongside each other on a daily basis. We have previously highlighted several areas for improvement in this regard, and have shared such recommendations with the taskforce.
Finally, we live in a world and time that is constantly shaped by global developments and changing trends. Even the youngest of adults amongst us have witnessed significant changes in the world around them in their lifetime.
As the government seeks to assist Singaporeans through current and future uncertainties, or to borrow the phrase – as the government seeks to secure our future together in a changed world, there must be a system in place to ensure disabled voices and perspectives are included and co-leading from the get-go in pursuance of best standards of inclusivity and rights protections. This is especially important in policy that deals with the most prominent of global developments.
For example, as we have previously highlighted – including in a February Straits Times (ST) Forum letter, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and how to approach AI is a common point of public discussion – yet, the disability angle is often left out in important discussions surrounding AI. Studies in other countries show that AI can widen inequality, and thus public policy and strategies to target such emerging trends like AI, as well as developments in digital infrastructure, must include realities faced by persons with disabilities from the beginning.
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Addressing such aspects will be important to foster a more robust approach to better provide assurance to persons with disabilities and family members of persons with disabilities across all life phases.
The interministerial taskforce is set to produce a set of recommendations later this year.
We have shared such above points of recommendations – and others – with the taskforce, and are appreciative that we have been able to meet with several members of the taskforce. We hope that the taskforce will incorporate such points in their recommendations – such as proposing timelines and recommendations for policies and investments that can begin laying the groundwork to progressively realise such objectives.
