About 1 in 6 families on ComLink+ scheme faced violence at home

About one in six lower-income families on a national scheme to support them in improving their lives faced violence at home.

- Theresa Tan Senior Social Affairs Correspondent

As at December 2024, 16 per cent of ComLink+ families had cases involving domestic violence or child protection concerns, up from 11 per cent in the year before.

This is the first time data on family violence is included in the Supporting Lower-Income Households Trends Report, now in its second edition.

The Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) on Dec 16 released the 2025 report, which examined the outcomes of the ComLink+ scheme for more than 10,000 families on it.

Announced in 2023, ComLink+ aims to boost social mobility by spurring needy families through financial incentives and other forms of support to take steps to improve their lives.

Under the scheme, eligible families can sign up for up to four packages in the areas of preschool education, employment, debt clearance and home ownership.

They will be given financial incentives and other forms of support if they meet the criteria for each package, such as by working in a CPF-paying job that pays at least $1,600 a month or sending their children to preschool regularly.

A total of 10,219 families were on the scheme as at December 2024.

The progress of these families was tracked across five domains in the latest report: income security, children's development and education, housing, family functioning, and health.

They were assessed on whether they had achieved stability, self-reliance or social mobility which are ascending categories to measure progress in these domains through different indicators.

The data on family violence comes under the family functioning domain, and 1,657 families had members who were "not safe from harm" in 2024.

A new domain is health, where 90 per cent of families achieved stability in 2024.