SOCIAL WELFARE
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Exclusion Project, has been implemented with the aim of assisting CSSA single parent families with young children to maximise their chances of participating in social and economic activities, help them raise their self-esteem and sense of personal worth, integrate into society and improve their lives through employment. At year-end, an accumulative 2 397 single parent families had been assisted through the project.
Re-engineering of Community Support Services for Elders
To eliminate service duplication and insufficient coordination arising from service fragmentation, and to provide a service infrastructure that will be more responsive to the changing needs of elders, a major exercise to re-engineer community support services for elders was launched in August. Under the plan, multi-services centres for the elderly will be upgraded to district elderly community centres, social centres for the elderly to neighbourhood elderly centres and home help teams to integrated home care services teams. The re-engineering proposals from NGOs were received in mid-November with the result to be announced in January 2003. The upgraded services would be implemented gradually from April 2003.
Social Welfare Programmes
There are seven social welfare programmes: family and child welfare services, social security, services for elders, rehabilitation and medical social services, services for offenders, community development, and services for young people.
Family and Child Welfare
The overall objective of the family and child welfare programme is to preserve and strengthen the family as a unit through assisting individuals and families to identify and prevent or deal with their problems, and to provide for needs which cannot be met from within the family. A comprehensive network of family and child welfare services is provided by the SWD and NGOs.
Services for Families
The department adopts a three-pronged approach to provide a continuum of services. to support families. At the primary level, prevention of problems and crises is effected through publicity, education, empowerment and early identification,
The publicity campaign on Empowering Families to Face Challenges was completed in July. To sustain the momentum of these publicity activities, another publicity campaign on Strengthening Families and Combating Violence began in August. The campaign aims to enhance public awareness of the need to strengthen families, seek early professional assistance and prevent violence.
To help strengthen families, about 4 000 programmes including talks, small group activities and mass media programmes were conducted by 69 family life education workers from the SWD and NGOs during the year. Five two-year Family Education pilot projects provided by the SWD and NGOs on a regional basis were to facilitate early action in preventing family tragedies and in identifying family problems. Twenty Family Support and Resource Centres set up in community centres provide drop-in service, mutual support and early identification and referral of cases in need of intensive casework service. These services are supplemented by the SWD's hotline service which provides 24-hour information on social welfare services. A Family