Manmohan Singh was director of Family and Caregiver Support at AWWA Caregiver Service between 2011 and mid-2017. During his tenure at AWWA, Mohan expanded recognition of caregivers to include domestic helpers as well as young and senior caregivers. He continues to advocate for a greater appreciation and recognition of family caregivers’ roles in ensuring the dignity and quality of life of their loved ones. Mohan’s passion for the cause is driven by his own experience with his 80-year-old mother, who has lived with schizophrenia since 1965. He is grateful that her well-being over five decades was achieved through a combination of unstinting family support and devoted domestic helpers working with mental health professionals.
In 2014, after spending 32 years at a multi-national company with the latest position as regional audit manager (ASEAN), Elizabeth Seah left to care for her mother who suffered from dementia. Before losing her mother in July 2016, she was the main caregiver with the help of good helpers, and she shared that the one-and-a-half years she spent with her mother was a rollercoaster ride. She decided to be a protagonist when Lien Foundation was looking for two seniors in April 2017 to include in a series of videos under Genki Kaki of their journey in Japan visiting various eldercare facilities. Her interest in eldercare is fuelled by her guilt that she feels she has not done enough for her mother and believes that she and her husband may need such services in their later years.
Jasmine Chua was a part-time customer service officer for AWWA Caregiver Service from 2012 to 2017. Before that, she was doing that role at the AiCare Hub at City Square Mall whilst caring for her parents and holding another part-time job on the weekends. Her role there was to register family caregivers for workshops on caregiving life-skills and to do administrative support. Between 2015 and early 2016, Jasmine was a team member for a pilot trial to provide weekend respite care service at AWWA’s Dementia Day Care Centre in Ang Mo Kio. In 2016, she supported the AWWA team on a pilot that focused on caregivers of persons with disability. Today, she focuses her attention full-time on her 82-year-old mother with moderate stage of dementia and keeps up-to-date with any information on dementia.
Janet Wong was a financial advisor, while at the time, taking care of her mother for 30 years. At the same time, she was also being a caregiver to her youngest son who was diagnosed with selective mutism at age nine. Selective mutism, which has a low prevalence in Singapore, is an anxiety disorder in which a person cannot speak in specific situations or to specific people. She counts her flexible working schedule as a blessing in the challenging 15 years of caring for her son, who today is 24. Presently, she is embarking on an e-commerce platform to help stay-at-home mothers, especially those with special needs children, to work from home and still earn an income.
