Adult Disability Home (ADH)

The Enabling Guide describes ADHs as providing long-term residential care for adults with disabilities who are neglected or whose caregivers are incapable of giving care — with short-term respite care also available. In the future-care map, this is the residential layer: the answer to “where does our child live?” when living with family stops being possible.

The practical layer

• Eligibility: 18 and above, Singapore Citizen or PR, with a verified permanent disability.
• The legal detail parents miss: for an applicant over 21 who lacks mental capacity, the application needs the approval of a deputy or donee — a parent’s signature alone is not the mechanism. This is the 21st-birthday shift in concrete form; see what changes legally at 21.
• Autism-specific homes are few: St. Andrew’s Adult Home in Sengkang and the THK Home for Disabled @ Sembawang are the named autism-focused residences. In the Autism Enabling Masterplan’s own caregiver survey, nearly all autistic adults were still living in the family home.

Residential planning is exactly what the Letter of Intent behind a Special Needs Trust is for — decisions best written down calmly, years early.