What is the Social Service Sector Strategic Thrusts (4ST)?

The 4ST was first launched in 2017 as a five-year strategic roadmap for the sector. It presented a shared vision and directions to guide the sector in achieving the vision of “every person empowered to live with dignity in a caring and inclusive society”. 

Since the launch of the 4ST roadmap in 2017, the COVID-19 pandemic and larger shifts globally and within Singapore, such as changing social issues, an evolving sector workforce, accelerated digital transformation, new forms of giving and a rise in volunteerism, have presented both challenges and opportunities for the social service sector. This prompted NCSS to convene stakeholders in 2021 to think about how the sector could respond to emerging trends and prepare for the future through the refreshed 4ST (2022-2026) roadmap.

The refreshed 4ST (2022-2026) lays out four strategic thrusts to pursue our shared vision:

• Thrust 1: Empowered and included individuals, families, and communities
• Thrust 2: Effective and impactful social purpose entities
• Thrust 3: Caring, collaborative and impactful social service ecosystem
• Thrust 4: Future-directed social service sector

With greater emphasis on planning capabilities to enable the sector to become more future-oriented, a new fourth thrust has been added to the 4ST (2022-2026) for the sector to be future-directed, emphasising the need for leaders in the sector to be future-oriented and better plan ahead for the sector’s services and capability needs, e.g. through the use of data and digitalisation. 

Read the 4ST (2022 – 2026) report for more details. 

As a complement to the 4ST (2022-2026) report, NCSS has also curated the 4ST Playbook, which lists the concrete steps, as well as examples and ideas that different stakeholders can explore to bring the refreshed 4ST forward.