In Japan, policy measures targeting children and young people in general continue to produce a certain degree of positive results. Such endeavors have not, however, succeeded in halting the nation's decreasing birthrate and the accompanying decline in the general population. Other worrisome conditions include child abuse, school truancy, adolescent suicide and other issues surrounding the younger members of Japanese society. With the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, meanwhile, further heavy burdens have been placed on children, youth and the family.

To truly come to grips with such challenges, Japan faces a pressing need to mobilize from the perspective of children themselves, and in doing so treat the interests of this younger segment as our utmost priority. Toward that end, we must boldly commit ourselves to realizing a “Society Centered on Children.” In my mind, this should be characterized by locating the essential initiatives and policies impacting this age group at the focus of the social fabric envisioned over the decades to come.

Under the lead of Ustaz Pasuni Maulan (former Registrar of Registry of Muslim Marriages in Singapore), a group of Kadi (Muslim marriage solemnisers) and Naib Kadi (deputy Muslim marriage solemnisers) initiated a ground-up effort in 2019 - called Bersamamu, or “With You” - to inspire soon-to-wed couples and the newlyweds to build strong and stable marriages.

The Kadi and Naib Kadi have good social standing and are respected by the Muslim community. They are well-placed to support couples in their journey towards an enduring marriage. The speakers will share on Bersamamu, which is an integral part of the Singapore Muslim community support ecosystem that focuses on strengthening support for marriage, parenthood, and early childhood education.

The presentation will also cover how the different partners collaborate to provide a strong foundation and ensure a strong start for our Singapore Muslim families. Preliminary findings from a qualitative assessment of Bersamamu would be shared to provide indications on the effectiveness of the programme and areas for improvement.

Neuroscience informs us that cognitive, physical, socio-emotional health and capacities are inextricably intertwined, and these interactions in a child's early years significantly influence how he/she grows and learns, and consequently their lifelong outcomes.

KidSTART was set up in 2016 as a pilot to ameliorate adverse effects of early disparities. It adopted and adapted evidence-based curricula and processes to facilitate upstream child development intervention, language acquisition and serve-and-return interaction between children and their caregivers, contextualised for Asian families in the home, community and preschool settings.

KidSTART upholds that parents know their children best, and have aspirations for their children. KidSTART therefore adopts a strengths-based approach to support parents in developing skills to engage their children positively. In its progressive scale-up islandwide, KidSTART drew upon learning points from the pilot and an evaluation study to identify key facilitators. The KidSTART experience also iterated the importance of working with other stakeholders in the ecosystem for holistic and sustainable support, including those who have benefited from KidSTART.

KidSTART's presentation highlights how its strategy of enhancing social mobility was an innovative process of learning and relearning to ensure that the playing field is levelled for lower-resourced children to do well, no matter their starting points.

Hikikomori syndrome refers to youths who withdraw from all kinds of social activities like school, training, or work, and isolate themselves at home for years. They often stay up late addicted to computer games. It has been a major mental health concern in Japan and many Asian societies.

COVID-19 pandemic dramatically changed our family and social lives. People physically separate each other to avoid infection, withdraw from face-to-face social encounters, stay home, and spend more time together with family.

Mechanism of hikikomori and game addiction is best understood from multi-level perspectives.

A. INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY, High level of anxiety in forming personal relationship, often diagnosed as ADHD, depression, or obsessive-compulsive disorders.
B. FAMILY DYSFUNCTION. High level of anxiety in the family, trauma and abuse in childhood, anxious attachment, conflict between parents and extended family, enmeshed family relationship, physical and psychiatric illness of family members.
C. SOCIO-CULTURAL influence in Asia. High expectation of academic performance, bullying and maltreatment at school, advancement of information technologies, and collectivistic nature of Asian society.

Solution to the problem includes creating safe and secure relationships in the family and society. We can provide consultation and counseling services for the individual youth, family, and community. We innovate new online service in addition to the traditional face-to-face services.

The three dramatic crises of Corona 19, pandemic, and shutdown have brought changes and challenges in the families around the world. As the consequences of financial insecurity, caregiving burden, and confinement-related stress, families are still facing threats to their relationships and family processes such as routines, rules, and rituals. This presentation seeks to provide insights into changes and challenges for families in the pandemic and endemic era based on family stress model within the ecological contexts. It gives a comprehensive perspective on how family functions are complexly linked to social breakdown and how families can be resilient to overcome crises and well-being of family in the future. Using a systematic review of the literature and meta-analysis, this presentation examines the magnitude and direction of the association among family stressor, resources, and family functioning before, during, and after the Covid-19 pandemic. The illustration and statistics of the centrality of family buffering against risk in the context of COVID-19 as well as promoting family functioning will be provided. Issues of family abuse and violence are included. Finally, implications of family-based intervention and research are discussed.

Objectives: This paper tests this hypothesis on a disadvantaged group of financially poor mothers in Singapore during the heights of Covid-19 pandemic.

Design: This is a mixed method study. We conducted five focused group discussions with interviewers who administered the third way of survey questionnaire to 464 mothers from low-income families between June and September 2020. Key themes emerged from the qualitative analysis of the focused group data were used to guide the analysis of the quantitative data from the mental health measurements administered to the participants.

Results: Interviewers reported about one-quarter of the mothers experienced heighten stress during Covid-19. Majority of the interviewers, however, did not observe mark increase in their stress levels. Correspondingly the quantitative data did not show significant increase in the depression and anxiety scores between wave 2 and 3 results. Most of them did not express helplessness. Numerous mothers were able to report different strategies in coping with the financial distress. The government Covid-19 support grants were cited by many as helpful in cushioning the financial stress. Comparing the quantitative measurement of hope scale scores before and during Covid-19 did not show statistically significant decline. A surprised finding, albeit few, poor mothers considered Covid-19 and the lock-down period as positive experience for their families as they had time to stay together.

Conclusion: We speculate the relatively stable level of mental health state of poor mothers amidst Covid-19 pandemic to their internal (psychological traits) resilience which is facilitated by external (social milieu) resilience. Significant resources made available by the Covid-19 support grants could have bolstered the adaptive strategies of the disadvantaged group in coping with financial distress at least in the immediate term. The mental health and resilience of poor mothers after the support grants are exhausted are areas for further research and intervention.

Historically, family services evolved as the most basic social welfare services, meeting a diversity of social needs. From the establishment of the first casework district office of the Social Welfare Department (SWD) in Hong Kong in 1965, SWD set up Family Services Centres (FSCs) in the 70s to focus their resources on social work services which assumed the primary responsibility in providing basic services to families and individuals in crisis and at risk. Upon allocation of substantial resources to strengthen family services in late 1990's, SWD re-engineered the then family service resources for better coordination of these services to address the increasing complexity of community needs and problems. Integrated Family Service Centres (IFSCs) operated by both SWD and non-governmental organisations were therefore formed in 2004-05, with the guiding principles of accessibility, early identification, integration and partnership. Unlike FSCs which provided casework, a spectrum of services are provided by IFSCs to address the multifarious needs of individuals and families of specific localities. Over the years, were there any changes and service wisdom of IFSCs? Under the COVID-19 pandemic which has extensive impacts on all walks of life, how did IFSCs respond to the changing service needs of her service users?

How do families benefit society? Happy, healthy families lead to individuals who are a contributing part of society. They have a support system to help build each other up. On the other hand, people raised in an unhealthy home environments struggle to be part of society. It hard for them to find their place in the world. They tend to struggle with social relationships and often substance abuse. The make up of the societal family units has profound effects on the values and actions of the whole.

Strong, healthy, happy families are a necessity to society. They teach us how to be part of our community, give back, and be our best selves. When we can do that, we can build a strong society and civilization. In what ways do you think families have an important influence on society? A nuclear Family support the course of finding a strong society away from the social disordered like terrorism, drugs addiction and social unrest. That is why the collective global work should be rendered to save the family structure, perspective and practice against the huge propaganda that promote individuality and propose alternatives out of nowhere.

Maldives has seen several landmark achievements in the area of supporting women, children, elderly and people with disabilities, and to strengthen their families, including the social safety net program, universal health insurance scheme and old age pension scheme.

Decentralization of social protection services has been one of the major achievements that helped individuals and families living in remote islands to seek help from a close range, hence, institutions has been established in each atoll to provide psychosocial support to the victims, and carrying out awareness programs.

A national campaign called ‘Geveshi Gulhun’ (Domestic Relationships) launched in 2020 to combat domestic violence and strengthen family relationship bases its activity plan on developing awareness materials and executing other innovative activities. As a result of this initiative, a significant increase has been noted in reporting DV cases over the last two years.

The Gender Equality Action Plan seeks to ensure gender equality in terms of leadership, economic development, justice and social well-being. The Action Plan will further expand the Geveshi Gulhun campaign. As the Action Plan seeks to promote the economic empowerment of women, various activities are to be conducted with the specific goal of protecting women's economic rights.

One of the major & crucial GEAP planned activity is conducting awareness programs about prenuptial rights and to provide social and economic support for women by preparing guidelines to ensure each partner is given their rightful share of joint property after divorce, expanding career pathways and entrepreneurship opportunities for women with disabilities and creating childcare spaces in government offices in order to ensure that childcare does not discourage parents, especially women, from seeking job opportunities

Strong families help to raise supportive and contributing members for the community. In turn, the community can help strengthen families and marriages to nurture resilient and self-reliant individuals. This is a mutually beneficial virtuous cycle which propagates so that other families may also succeed. Partnering the community is therefore an important lever in Singapore to help us build strong and loving families. Ms Sun Xueling, Minister of State for the Ministry of Social and Family Development, Singapore, will be sharing how community partnerships have helped to strengthen families and marriages in Singapore through various means. From helping families with different needs to better build resilience to celebrating the joys of having strong families, Singapore's community partners have helped to reach out to many families and provide assistance in a timely and accessible manner to strengthen their familial bonds. Besides working with families, Singapore's community partners have also helped to complement policy and programme enhancements through outreach, engagement and even co-creation of solutions with the public. The spirit of community partnership assures families that they are not alone at every step of their family building journey, and hopefully they too can help support others when they are ready.