SERVICES FOR INDIVIDUALS
'An equally important aspect of your work will lie in helping individuals with their problems.'
Directive to City District Officers.
68. For over 100 years officers of the S.C.A. have been available to help in almost all types of personal problem. The considerable expansion represented by the establishment of the C.D.O. scheme has made these services much more widely available.
69. I should have preferred to describe this work mainly in statistical terms but the disparity in the time the C.D.O.s have been appointed and the accessibility of their offices would reduce the value of any statistical analysis at this stage. A table listing cases dealt with in the four offices which opened in May 1968 appears at the end of this section.
70. C.D.O.s have kept records of personal cases and produced statistics themselves but it is not yet easy to summarize them. We have not yet established a uniform recording system and this is a serious weakness which we shall remedy. What is required is a standard form capable of reduction to a punched card which, while not too onerous for the staff to fill in, will contain all the data needed for analysis. Our aim in the analysis will be to draw conclusions about policy or implemen- tation of policy. The great majority of people who have dealings with the Government go straight to the department concerned. Theoretically they should all do this even with complaints and appeals, but in practice there have always been other channels and no doubt there always will be. Many people are now bringing their problems to the C.D.O.s and the most useful way we can draw conclusions about why they do so will be by statistical analysis.
71. The Public Enquiry Service is now incorporated into the C.D.O. scheme and P.E.S. centres as such remain only in the Central Govern- ment Offices and in Mong Kok. The Wan Chai office and the temporary centres opened during confrontation have closed and the staff have been posted to the C.D.O.s. In the five permanent City District Offices that have been opened the P.E.S. counter is in the shop front. It has not been easy to train all the staff required for these counters and we are constantly faced with leave and sickness problems. Reception is most important and we hope to train additional staff in this work so that they can step in when the regular P.E.S. staff is away and also to give P.E.S. staff a
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