SINGAPORE - After a severely malnourished five-year-old girl was confined in a toilet for 10 months and relentlessly abused by her father until she died, the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) has taken various steps to strengthen the child protection system.

These include beefing up the practice guide for case workers at Family Service Centres (FSCs) to see, in person, vulnerable family members to ensure their safety and well-being, and ensuring regular safety checks and monitoring of abused children after they are discharged from alternative care and returned home to their families.

Ayeesha, the five-year-old girl, has a younger brother who was also severely abused by their father. The boy and his four step-siblings – children from their father’s second marriage, and their stepmother’s child from her previous marriage – have been placed in alternative care by MSF’s Child Protective Service, an MSF spokeswoman told The Straits Times on May 10. 

Alternative care means that the children can be placed in the care of family or friends, in foster care, or in a voluntary children’s home.

On April 30, Ayeesha’s father was sentenced to 34½ years in jail and 12 strokes of the cane for killing her, and for abusing her and her younger brother. Ayeesha died of a head injury in 2017 after her 44-year-old father hit her face up to 20 times.

He also gave his two children so little food that they ate faeces and the stuffing of a mattress during the two years that they were abused. Ayeesha weighed only 13.2 kg when she died.

The judge lifted the gag order on her first name “so that society may remember her”.

The children were initially placed in foster care in June 2014 after their parents divorced, and staff from Thye Hua Kwan (THK) FSC @ Tanjong Pagar monitored their welfare after they went home to live with their father and stepmother in early 2015.

However, the man lied repeatedly about his children’s care arrangements and whereabouts. At different points in time, the FSC’s staff were unable to contact the man, despite calling him repeatedly and going to his flat.

For about two years until Ayeesha died in August 2017, the children were not seen by any case officer and had not attended any school. 

About 10 months before the girl died, the man asked a THK FSC case worker if he could place his two children in foster care as he was afraid he might harm them out of frustration.

The case worker notified MSF and asked the man to take his children to the FSC the next day, but he did not do so. He also lied that his mother was caring for them.

Some time after that incident, another THK staff member went to the man’s flat. The man’s wife asked to talk at the void deck, instead of in the flat, and told the staff member that they had approached an agency to place the children for adoption and asked the FSC to close its case.

The MSF spokeswoman told ST that a review was conducted after Ayeesha’s death to identify areas for improvement, and that it is continually working with its partners to learn from past cases and improve processes. 

In this case, the ministry worked with THK FSC to review and strengthen its protocols, supervision structure and case management practices over a year after the review.

For example, THK FSC has to ensure that all cases with safety concerns go through an internal review panel before it can close the case. The FSC also has to strengthen its standard operating procedures for managing cases in which the person is uncontactable or not responsive.

In addition, MSF has beefed up the practice guide for FSC case workers to include a framework where they have to see, in person, vulnerable family members.

The framework guides case workers on what actions to take if they are unable to see vulnerable family members, such as contacting MSF to invoke powers under the Children and Young Persons Act (CYPA) to mandate access to the child.

For abused children who are placed in alternative care and later reunited with their families after it is deemed safe to do so, the MSF has also enhanced its protocols with the child protection community to tighten the reunification process.

This includes ensuring regular safety checks, and monitoring the child and family after the child goes home. 

Case workers now work together with community partners to check on the child at least once a month for one year or longer after the child goes home. The frequency of these checks and the duration of support given depend on the circumstances and needs of each family, the MSF spokeswoman said.

In cases where parents continuously refuse to let the agencies see or have access to their children during these welfare checks, she said MSF would invoke its powers under the CYPA to mandate access to the child when there are reasonable grounds to believe that the child is in need of care or protection.

She added: “While reunification is generally better overall for a child’s well-being, case workers would not hesitate to deny reunification if there are safety concerns. It is not possible to guarantee that there will not be a relapse of abuse in all cases of reunification. 

“However, we are confident that these updated procedures and coordination will help ensure that vulnerable children are sighted regularly and that any signs of abuse are detected early. This will keep such cases as low as possible.”

In 2023, another case of a two-year-old girl who was abused to death – with her remains burned in a pot and hidden at home – horrified Singaporeans.

The father of the girl, Umaisyah, was sentenced to 21½ years’ jail and 18 strokes of the cane in September 2023 for causing her death.

Umaisyah was in foster care for about two years. Her father abused her after she returned home, until she died in 2014. 

Her parents spun various lies to hide her death, including to an Education Ministry officer who contacted them to find out why she was not registered for Primary 1.

The crime was uncovered only five years later when Umaisyah’s uncle found the pot and showed it to his friends, who reported the discovery to the police.

Besides Umaisyah, at least three other cases in which a child died after being abused by a parent or parent’s partner were heard in court in 2023.

In a parliamentary reply in October 2023, Minister for Social and Family Development Masagos Zulkifli said that the incidents heard recently in court had occurred in different years and do not represent a spike in child death cases due to abuse.

He added that since November 2020, MSF has “further strengthened” protocols on information sharing and coordination with various agencies to look out for vulnerable children who are under the state’s care to ensure their well-being.

Meanwhile, the MSF spokeswoman said that Ayeesha’s brother, who is now 10, is “progressing well” with support and intervention from various professionals. He is able to carry out activities of daily living independently.

When he was admitted to hospital after being rescued, the boy was not able to stand by himself despite being almost four years old. Besides being severely undernourished, he was diagnosed with global developmental delay due to social deprivation.

The MSF spokeswoman added: “The nature of child abuse is that it is not always easily detectable, particularly when parents actively conceal their actions. Child abuse can happen any time and anywhere, and addressing it requires a whole-of-society effort.

“Anyone who suspects a case of child abuse should report to the police or National Anti-Violence and Sexual Harassment Helpline on 1800-777-0000.”