18
REVIEW
provision of basic relief to the destitute and those made homeless by fire, flood and typhoon. Nevertheless, almost from birth the department interested itself in community development and, although the pattern has changed over the years, the interest has continued. More recently this aspect of the workings of the depart- ment has shown itself to be of paramount importance to the future of the Colony. Youth welfare was also an early starter. Work in this field was initially centred on the 8-15 year age group, most of whom had little chance of finding school places. But as the problems changed, the approach widened and energy is now being turned to the highly constructive work of creating outlets for the more inflammable 14-21 year age group, which finds little of positive consequence to provide diversion from the tedium en- gendered by a crowded environment.
A decade ago, the world became conscious of Hong Kong's problems and of its resolute attempts to grapple with those problems. The world's interest was stirred and took tangible form in 1960, when World Refugee Year mobilized resources to deal with the problem of the refugee on a worldwide basis. Hong Kong benefited enormously from that campaign. Direct gifts provided, for example, a completely new range of facilities in the community centres built with World Refugee Year money to serve the newly developing resettlement areas of large-scale rehousing. Another result was the expansion of many voluntary agency programmes and the introduc- tion of new programmes largely financed and partially staffed from overseas. These programmes are still running six years later, and are still, to a great extent, provided from overseas.
One of the most valuable products of World Refugee Year was a review conducted in 1960, by Dame Eileen Younghusband, which established the basis for the development of a properly planned system of social work training for Hong Kong. This development paved the way for the acceptance of social work as a profession of standing in Hong Kong as it is elsewhere, and is beginning to pay dividends in the improved quality of services that voluntary agencies and government welfare services are able to provide. The review was followed up in detail by two further reports on university training and in-service training which were, like the first, a direct outcome of World Refugee Year. The accept- ance of these reports has been greatly facilitated by the substantial