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Social Welfare
At the tertiary level, 11 Family and Child Protective Services Units render specialised services for cases of spouse or cohabitant battering, child abuse or child custody dispute.
Services for Children
Children and young people who are assessed to be in need of out-of-home care owing to family, behavioural or emotional problems have recourse to residential care, with 3,781 such places provided at the year end. The department also works with three NGOs accredited under the Adoption Ordinance to arrange local or overseas adoption for children whose parents have abandoned or are unable to maintain them.
The department provides day child care services to support parents who cannot take care of their children temporarily because of work or other reasons. Together with the Education Bureau, it subsidises some stand-alone child care centres and kindergarten-cum-child care centres to provide full-day child care. At the year end, child care centres had about 33,000 places, of which about 7,000 were government-subsidised. The department was funding another 434 Occasional Child Care Service places and 2,254 Extended Hours Service places at these centres. It also subsidises the Neighbourhood Support Child Care Project, which provides at least 954 places for needy families to receive flexible child care services from volunteers. The department is conducting a consultancy study to advise within 2018 on the long-term development of child care services.
The department's two-year Pilot Project on Child Care Training for Grandparents, launched in 2016 with funding from the Lotteries Fund, seeks to strengthen family ties between generations, enhance child care and reinforce support for nuclear families by enabling grandparents to become well-trained child carers at home. It also promotes active ageing of grandparents through life-long learning. The 27 training courses, with a total enrolment of 589 trainees, were completed in 2017,
Services for Young People
The department subsidises NGOs to provide young people aged between six and 24, including those at risk, with preventive, supportive and remedial services.
Integrated Children and Youth Services Centres
There are 139 integrated children and youth services centres (ICYSCs), providing centre-based, outreach and school social work services to address young people's developmental needs.
Outreach
Nineteen youth outreach teams serve high-risk youths and deal with juvenile gang issues. Eighteen designated ICYSCS offer outreach services at night to help youths who loiter at neighbourhood black spots get back on the right track.
School Social Work
In 2017, 560 school social workers were provided for 464 secondary schools to help students with academic, social and emotional problems.
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