would not necessarily be spread evenly throughout Hong Kong; nor is it likely that a full range of services would be provided, or that the charges made would be below those made for Government financed services. Further- more, it would be necessary to establish supervisory arrangements to ensure that they were of an acceptable standard.
11.13 The existing social security system already provides forms of individual cash subsidy enabling the recipient to purchase social welfare services. This may be related to individual needs (as with the public assistance scheme) or to members of a defined group of people (as with the welfare allowance scheme). The effect, in general, is that only limited financial aid is currently available, through the social security system, to low income families above the public assistance level who have at least one member at work (although the suggested sickness, injury and death benefit scheme would go some way to altering this).
11.14
It follows from para. 11.12 that, if sufficient money were to be provided through social security to enable those who at present make use of Government financed services (for example, rehabilitation services) to buy all the services which they need, there would have to be a new system of individual cash subsidies. This would be expensive, the capita cost of some kinds of services (e.g. rehabilitation) being very high. A cash subsidy for each disabled person, for instance, sufficient to purchase a full range of services, would be very expensive if provided on a universal, non means- tested, basis. And the introduction of a test, to prevent payments going to those able to buy services, would be an expensive administrative measure.
11.15 Even if it were possible to devise an acceptable means of providing individual cash subsidies, it does not follow that this would result in the best use of scarce community resources. Private welfare services might take more than their fair share of trained social workers; those remaining with the Government might have to be deployed onto supervisory work, which would take them away from service provision and place an additional cost on the Government. Altogether, a large private social welfare sector would make it significantly more difficult to secure the most effective use of available
resources.
11.16
Having carefully examined the considerations set out above, the Government has concluded that there are objections of both principle and practice to a change to reliance on private welfare services, paid for by the user of the service who would be helped through a system of individual subsidies.
An experiment in developing non Government financed services
11.17
However, in spite of the conclusion in the last paragraph, it may be advisable to encourage, in appropriate fields, the growth of non Government financed services. If this were practicable, and could be achieved without draining the resources of the Government financed sector (for example, trained manpower) there might be significant advantages. It might lead to the introduction of more resources into the social welfare field and allow Government financed services to concentrate on other forms of social welfare. Those providing the service would become more account- able, because those paying for the service would feel free to go elsewhere if dissatisfied.
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