39. In April, 1948 the Probation Section of the Social Welfare Office consisted of three untrained probation officers transferred from the Police and Prisons Departments. Strong representations were made for the recruitment of a suitable Principal Probation Officer to come to Hong Kong on contract for three or four years. The salary offered was attractive, and the possibilities of the work involved far wider responsibilities and a freer hand than any Principal Probation Officer would normally experience in the United Kingdom, including as they did the selection and training of staff, advice on the provisions of the law relating to Juvenile Offenders and the work of probation officers generally, together with the planning, staffing, and running of the first post-war Remand Home, and the crea- tion of the first Boys' Approved School. However, it was not until late in 1950, on the appointment of Mr. D. A. E. Peterson, that a suitable officer was found to fill this important post.
40. In 1948 the Salvation Army, with the aid of generous cash grants from the Salvation Army Headquarters in London and from the Hong Kong Government, renovated a large house at Kwai Chung near Tsuen Wan in the Southern District of the New Territories, and opened there Hong Kong's first Approved School for Girls. This was probably the first school of its kind in East Asia, outside of Japan, and certainly anticipated by at least five years any similar development in South-East Asia. The Salvation Army was given a free hand in its administration, but Government relied upon the Social Welfare Office to act as the necessary link between the Courts and the Home for the admission of girls, and to be the control- ling channel for the annual maintenance grants.
41. After the war the Prisons Department continued to run a boys' reformatory in some well-built stone huts near to, but not in Stanley Prison. These buildings were needed for the creation of an institution along the lines of a Borstal. Government therefore decided that the Reformatory should be removed as far as possible from the prison area, and should be placed under the administrative control of the Social Welfare Officer whose duty it would be to run it on the lines of an
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