SOCIAL WELFARE
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as well as being the headquarters of the Boys' & Girls' Clubs Association.
During the year the Assistant Social Welfare Officer (Youth Welfare) returned from Indonesia where she had been on secondment as an expert adviser on Child Welfare under the auspices of the World Health Organization.
Care of the Disabled. Welfare work among handicapped and disabled groups in Hong Kong is still at a very early stage of development compared with similar work in Western countries. Resources here are so inadequate to meeting the needs of those who are normal, that little could be spared in the past for the needs of the blind, the deaf and dumb, the physically crippled, and the mentally deficient. In recent years, however, a much greater awareness of the responsi- bility towards less fortunate fellow-citizens was developed, and encouraging progress has been made in improving the care and training of blind children, deaf and dumb children, and crippled children. Such work is mainly in the hands of voluntary welfare societies, whilst the Special Welfare Ser- vices Section of the Social Welfare Office keeps in close touch with the problems of the handicapped, and with the voluntary organizations which specialize in such work. There are as yet no special provisions for the care of mentally defective children, although some 65 of them have found shelter in various welfare institutions.
The inauguration late in 1955 of the Hong Kong Society for the Blind was a milestone in the development of welfare work among the blind, and the society plans to open a sheltered workshop where the blind will first receive expert training in manual skills, and then later be able to earn their own living, either in competition with the sighted or under sheltered workshop conditions.
Ebenezer Blind Home now accommodates about one hundred blind children who receive a normal primary school education mainly through the medium of Cantonese braille,