From 2 years to 6 months: Families see shorter waits for early intervention support

SINGAPORE – At the end of 2024, Fatin Fatihah waited just a month to secure a place for her son, Zeyn Idris, in a government-subsidised early intervention programme – much to her surprise.

She had heard from other parents that the wait to enter the Early Intervention Programme for Infants and Children (EIPIC) could take as long as two years.

Her experience reflects a broader improvement.

Children waited an average of 5.5 months for an EIPIC place in 2025, down from 7.5 months in 2023, according to a written parliamentary reply in July.

EIPIC supports children with developmental needs, who require medium to high levels of early intervention support, in a group setting.

This comes as the Government expanded the programme’s capacity by about 25 per cent over the same period, from 5,800 places to 7,300.

The shorter wait is a relief to many parents, who have long worried about lengthy queues during the crucial early years, when intervention is most effective in their child’s developmental years.

Those whose children were referred to EIPIC in 2024 and 2025 generally saw shorter wait times than families in the past.

The number of children waiting for an EIPIC place almost halved, from 2,600 in 2023 to 1,400 as at December 2025, the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) said in response to queries.

Fatin’s son Zeyn was diagnosed with suspected autism in September 2024. Soon after, SG Enable, the national agency for persons with disabilities, contacted her to discuss early intervention options.

By October 2024, she was offered an EIPIC spot.

Zeyn, now three, attends sessions four times a week at Fei Yue’s EIPIC centre in Wellington Circle, and has made progress.

He could not speak at first, but now talks about things like his favourite colours.

“I’m actually very impressed by how fast he caught up with language development,” said Fatin, a 34-year-old early childhood educator.

Both Fei Yue, which runs four EIPIC centres, and SPD, a charity operating six such facilities, said wait times are now about two to six months. This is down from one to two years in 2023.

Cases that take longer may be because families choose to wait for a preferred location or schedule, or seek a second opinion before enrolling, said SPD’s chief executive Abhimanyau Pal.

That was the case for Indra, now four.

A few months after he was referred to EIPIC in 2025, his mother, Norliza Noordin, was offered a place at a centre in Sembawang.

But the 42-year-old homemaker declined it because travelling there from their Yishun home meant it would be too rushed to pick her daughter up from primary school on time.

So she waited about a year for an EIPIC placement at Rainbow Centre Yishun Park School, where Indra enrolled in January.

“I needed to be patient. There were other people’s kids (on the wait list) too, not only my son,” said Norliza, who has four children.

More places, fewer referrals

The shorter waiting times have been driven in part by an expansion of EIPIC capacity.

Four new EIPIC centres opened in 2024, including SPD-run centres in Jurong West and Kembangan.

AWWA also opened its fourth centre, in Fernvale Woods, increasing its annual capacity from about 800 children to over 1,000.

Beryl Ng, director of early intervention at AWWA, said the average process from application to successful placement at its centres takes three months.

Rainbow Centre has also seen waiting times fall sharply. Its Yishun Park facility had shorter waits from 15 months in 2024 to about six months currently, while its Margaret Drive centre recorded waits of just one to three months in 2025.

The agency opened a third EIPIC centre in Marsiling in January.

Its director of early intervention services Tan Eng Tat said it hired more teachers and improved interview and placement processes to meet expanded capacity.

Rainbow Centre now has 564 students, up from 414 in 2023.

Fei Yue is opening another centre in Bukit Batok by the end of 2026, adding about 170 places, said senior lead early intervention educator Joanna Toh.

A spokeswoman for Thye Hua Kwan Moral Charities said its average EIPIC wait time has dropped from up to 24 months in 2023 to about eight to 10 months in 2026, while enrolment grew from 500 to 773 children, as at June.

Earlier access to intervention can “help address developmental needs more promptly, strengthen developmental outcomes and reduce gaps over time”, she said.

“For caregivers, receiving support sooner also means earlier access to professional guidance, practical strategies and reassurance, helping to alleviate uncertainty, anxiety and caregiving stress.”

At the same time, demand also appears to be easing.

The number of referrals of children for medium to high levels of early intervention support has decreased from 2,800 in 2022 to 2,300 in 2025, according to MSF’s July report on family trends.

The ministry said fewer children were assessed to require such levels of support, and it will continue to closely monitor referral trends with KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital and National University Hospital – the two hospitals that conduct such assessments.

Support for families while waiting

Five EIPIC operators told The Straits Times that they offer families support from the point of referral, such as providing caregivers with practical strategies to manage their children at home.

“We recognise that even a shorter wait time can be an anxious period for families,” said Fei Yue’s Toh.

In 2025, Rainbow Centre provided interim one-to-one early intervention for 23 children on its wait list for 10 weeks, said Tan.

Entrepreneur See Haojun, 40, hopes for more funding to support early intervention professionals in their work.

His six-year-old son Elijah was in AWWA’s EIPIC centre in Fernvale Woods from 2023 – when it was first operational and before it officially opened – to 2026.

After Elijah attended the programme, his meltdowns stopped and he could hold conversations with others. The family also learnt helpful strategies to use at home.

“I’m lucky to work with a group (of early intervention professionals) who are very dedicated, but I also don’t think that they are the exception,” said See.