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Mr. HUI Yin fat: Sir, the Financial Secretary's middle- class Budget this year, highlighting tax concessions and increased social services expenditures, has won for him salvos from almost all sectors of the community. The surplus Budget, while maintaining the continuity and prudence of previous Budgets, has enabled the Government to fulfil its promise of appropriating a fair share to
social welfare services. Indeed, the $3.9 billion allocation for social welfare, representing
6.3 per cent of the total Budget, compared favourably with allocations in the past few years, and gave reason for the voluntary welfare sector to rejoice. [While ack- nowledging the auspicious gesture, I do not hesitate to point out that, social security payments still absorbed 83 per cent or $584 million of this year's increase over
the 1987-88 estimates for social welfare. I also hasten
to add that the increase in social welfare expenditures this year is only adequate for our social welfare
provisions to catch up on slippages accumulated in the past. Here I feel obliged to draw Members' attention to several problem areas in the social welfare field that
call for a more equitable distribution of available
resources.
Social work training
At the Budget debate last year, I harped on the need to improve the quality of social welfare which hitherto remains comparatively low. Like the medical and teaching
work 28 professions, there is, in the social
profession an
29 insistence on a qualified standard of professional practice
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achieved through formal training, which partly explains our strong objection to the recruitment of general degree
32 holders to fill social work posts. According to the latest
social work manpower statistics, some 3,300 social workers possess social work degrees or diplomas, while an equal number have no formal social training at all. The untrained Welfare
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social workers, who are serving as children's and youth