discretionary grants for specified services, is no longer appropriate in all areas of service. For example, where the Government sees an important role for the voluntary sector in a key area of service, an assurance of adequate financial support is essential if a service of the required standard is to be provided. It is also important that there should be some means of ensuring that the increasing public funds being devoted to welfare services are well spent. Both the Government and the Hong Kong Council of Social Service have been giving urgent attention to this matter and it is hoped that consultations on proposed changes can reach fruition during 1979.
Relationship between Social Security and Social Welfare Services
5.6
Improvements in the range and level of social security payments do not necessarily imply that direct social welfare services should be correspondingly reduced. There is no inherent overlap between the two, since social security provides financial help for those who are unable to be fully self-supporting, whereas social welfare services are for those who have a need for such service. Family counselling and community centres illustrate the general validity of this statement. In the first case, what is needed is advice and assistance in resolving family problems, not money. In the second case, community centres provide a service which, generally speaking, cannot be purchased commercially, so that a cash allowance would not provide an adequate substitute.
5.7
There are, however, two ways in which the development of social security may have a direct effect on social welfare services. Firstly, it may affect the demand for a particular service, either by reducing demand (for example better cash benefits would encourage more elderly people to stay with their families and so reduce the need for institutional care) or by enabling some people to buy the service privately rather than rely on government-run or publicly financed services. Secondly, improved cash benefits enable the recipient to make a contribution towards the particular service he requires and should logically lead to a review of the existing policy and practice on fee charging.
5.8
Most social welfare services are government financed and to a large extent, cater for those with limited financial means. The better off tend to buy them, if they are available for purchase. The Government does not propose that there should be any general change to reliance on private welfare services (that is non-government financed services), paid for by the user of the service who would be helped through Social Security or other individual subsidies. There are objections, both in principle and in practice, to such a change. Private services respond to demand and profitability but 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 within the means of all who require such services. Moreover there would be difficulties in ensuring an acceptable standard of service without elaborate and expensive supervisory machinery.
5.9
The existing social security system already provides forms of individual cash subsidy enabling the recipient to purchase some social welfare services. In general, however, only limited financial aid is available. The per capita costs of some services, such as institutional care for the disabled and the elderly, are high so that considerable additional expenditure would be involved if sufficient money were to be provided through the social security system to enable those who at present use Government financed services to buy a full range of services. This would be particularly so if the subsidies were to be on a universal, non-contributory and non-means-tested basis. If a means-test were to be introduced to prevent payments going to those able to buy services, elaborate and expensive administrative machinery would be required. On the whole, it seems better to provide the necessary services and to ensure that these services are within the general means of the client group, with the social security system providing the necessary financial support for those with special needs, e.g. the elderly, or those who are unable to afford the fees charged.
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