SSR Seminar Series: From Case Management to Community Empowerment: Embedding the Empowered Families Initiative in Social Work Practice
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- This is a physical seminar event.
- Registration slots will be assigned on a first-come, first-served basis.
- Please register by 22 March 2026. Successful registrants will be informed by 23 March 2026 via email.
- If you cannot make it after receiving the email confirmation, please let us know as soon as possible via email.
Seminar Details
The Empowered Families Initiative (EFI) is a community-led model that supports lower-income families through matched savings, peer support, grants and co-created family pathways. In 2024, EFI was scaled out to Kampong Kapor Community Services (KKCS), marking the first attempt to embed EFI within a Social Service Agency (SSA). This presentation shares emerging insights from KKCS’s process of adopting EFI. Preliminary observations on insights drawn from practitioner reflections suggest that EFI shifted practitioners’ perspectives from problem-focused to possibility-driven ones. Practitioners found that EFI opened complementary pathways alongside casework, enabling families to strengthen community connections and pursue self-determined progress. These shifts highlight implications for social work practice: EFI is a potential platform to meaningfully integrate casework, community work, and group work, demonstrating how individualised support and collective empowerment can complement each other to better support families’ socio-economic and social development. These learning highlights EFI’s potential as a modality that bridges community building and social mobility, while offering insights into how SSAs can evolve practice to embrace both individualised and collective empowerment approaches.
Executive Director,
Empowered Families Initiative Ltd
Assistant Senior Social Worker,
Kampong Kapor Community Services
Social Worker,
Kampong Kapor Community Services
Participant
Empowered Families Initiative
Alumni
Empowered Families Initiative
Palvindran has over 13 years of experience in the social service sector. He began his career as a counsellor working with youths-at-risk and their families, with a focus on restorative justice. He later joined a Family Service Centre as a Community Social Worker, where he worked closely with communities to identify strengths and mobilise assets to support lower-income families in moving towards greater stability.
Trained in Asset-Based Community Development, Palvindran was also part of the workgroup convened by the Ministry of Social and Family Development that developed the Community Work Practice Guide for Singapore’s social service sector. He is currently the Executive Director and Co-Founder of Empowered Families Initiative, where he advocates for a strengths-based, developmental approach to supporting lower-income families.
Wei Lin is a social worker at Kampong Kapor Family Service Centre with five years of practice experience. Working across casework and community work, she supports families in harnessing their strengths to create sustainable, self-directed changes.
Over the past three years, she has worked closely with Empowered Families Initiative (EFI), playing a key role in piloting EFI within KKCS - progressing from observer, to co-facilitator, to supporting its integration into organisational practice.
Raudhah has been a social worker at Kampong Kapor Family Service Centre for 4 years, journeying alongside families facing complex life challenges. Her experience in casework, community programmes and children’s group work has shaped her belief that meaningful change often happens when individual support is paired with collective empowerment.
Through her role in EFI, she witnessed participants redefine what progress means for themselves, celebrating growth that is not always captured during casework. This experience sparked her curiosity to explore how casework can be more intentionally integrated with programmes and community initiatives, creating new possibilities that support family empowerment and long-term social mobility.
Rina Sari Dewi became part of the 5th run of the Empowered Families Initiative in August 2025, determined to elevate her home-based curry puff venture while balancing a full-time role in the food service industry and raising three teenage children as a single mother. With the guidance and support of EFI, her monthly sales grew from average of 700 pieces to exceeding 1,200.
From participant to beacon of inspiration, Rina spearheaded TikTok Live collaborations among fellow home-based entrepreneurs, motivating others with her infectious positivity and relentless determination.
Muhamad Firdaus Bin Zulkifly was part of the 4th iteration of the Empowered Families Initiative (October 2024 to May 2025), where he pursued his aspiration of growing his home-based pineapple tarts business to better support his family. Since completing the programme, he has expanded his operations and now co-manages a canteen with his sister.
Today, Firdaus serves as a co-facilitator for EFI’s Peer Support Collectives with Kampong Kapor Community Services, sharing his lived experience as a beneficiary-turned-peer mentor.
Senior Research Fellow
Institute of Policy Studies,
Lee Kuan Yew School
of Public Policy
National University of Singapore
Dr. Robyn Tan is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies. Her research focuses on the design and implementation of policies, programmes, and interventions within real-world service settings. Specialising in theory-driven evaluation, she seeks to understand “what (about interventions) works, for whom, under what conditions, and why”. In addition, she is interested in the use of community-based participatory research to effect change with individuals and communities. She received her PhD in Development Policy and Management from the Global Development Institute at the University of Manchester, UK.