1
Review
THE SOCIAL SERVICES
TOKYO, Berlin, Manila, Wiesbaden, Washington, Santiago, Madrid and Stockholm; all these and other cities have heard in 1966 from Hong Kong people something of the Hong Kong which lies behind the familiar facade of tourist resort and industrial phenomenon whose products stock the emporia of the West. They have heard, rather, of a Hong Kong where people, like others the world over, live, die, laugh, cry, work, play, sell, buy, teach and learn; a place where nearly 4 million individuals, with their human failings and virtues, needs and desires, abilities and disabilities, provide the raw material from which a community is woven. In all these cities during 1966 our doctors, teachers, social workers, administrators, housing managers and others have met in conference with their counterparts from all over the world to discuss the varied problems of social development. The background to their contribution is a tale of challenge boldly met, a tale of energy and dedication, a tale of co-operation between East and West, official and unofficial, lay and professional. It is a tale, also, of beginnings rather than endings, of the future as well as the past, of failures as well as successes.
The message of the Hong Kong Annual Report's review chapter for 1956, under the title ‘A Problem of People', was that Hong Kong was faced, and must realize that it was faced, with the necessity to provide permanently for all the needs of a greatly swollen popula- tion for their employment, shelter, health, education, safety- in short for the creation of a new society. Ten years later, and in the year immediately following critical reviews of policy in the two important fields of education and social welfare, it seems wholly appropriate that the review chapter should focus upon the develop- ment of the social services. For while each major field of social development might well claim the review chapter for a year, this would merely tend to emphasize what some have sought to criticize,