SOCIAL WELFARE
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The Hong Kong Society for Rehabilitation has been granted land at Kwun Tong for a pilot centre which will at first cater for victims of industrial accidents who can be restored to factory work in a matter of months; specially trained staff are being recruited for this centre from overseas. The Social Welfare Depart- ment provides vocational training and sheltered employment, for instance in tapestry work, sock-knitting and printing, for about 120 physically handicapped adults, including some cured leprosy patients from the leprosarium at Hei Ling Chau; this happens at the Department's North Point Relief Camp and at a new day centre run together with the Society. The Red Cross runs five classes for the instruction of crippled children in hospitals.
The number of blind persons registered has now reached 2,600, 1,000 more than a year ago. A survey in the New Territories, made by a mobile team from the Medical and Health Department in co-operation with the Rural Committees, the Hong Kong Society for the Blind and the Social Welfare Department, found over 250 blind people hitherto unregistered. Expansion of two schools should ensure that in about two years' time there will be a school place for every blind child. Two hostels for homeless blind children leaving school were opened at the end of the year. The Department runs five clubs for the blind where simple braille and handicrafts are taught, as a first adjustment to blindness; those who are em- ployable pass on to three centres for vocational training and sheltered employment which the Society for the Blind runs with some assistance from the Department. Trainees have so far been engaged in simple crafts such as brush-making and have now started assembling plastic flowers on contract. A factory for 200 is about to be constructed, with a hostel and training wing.
Of the 500 or more deaf children on the register, the number still without access to any form of training has gone down to about 160, with the opening during the year of the Victoria Park School for the Deaf, a branch school of the Hong Kong School for the Deaf, and of two clubs for deaf children run by the Social Welfare Department. The school uses the oral method of instruc- tion, whereas the Chinese Overseas School for the Deaf and Dumb normally employs manual signs. The Department distributed hearing aids to 38 needy deaf persons during the year. Some deaf
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