Approved School. Early in 1952 $150,000 was set aside for the purchase and adaptation of a large building at Castle Peak in the New Territories, and in January, 1953 the Stanley Reformatory School was closed and the boys transferred to their new premises at Castle Peak. The Salvation Army accepted the management of this new Approved School for the first five years and agreed to assist in the training of the permanent staff which would eventually take the school over as a part of the Social Welfare Office organization. For the present, it was felt that the Salvation Army had more experienced and better-qualified officers available to undertake this specialized kind of work.
42. For some years there was a great deal of discussion about the need for setting up probation hostels, but the difficulty of finding suitable sites, the number of juveniles involved, and the urgent demand for other even more necessary social services, made it impossible to carry out any such scheme fully. However, a small experiment on these lines was started when an unofficial committee was formed in Kowloon, with the Principal Probation Officer a member, to make plans for an all-day club and residential hostel for juvenile probationers referred by the Courts for assistance. From this modest com- mittee's efforts resulted, at the end of 1952, the Shanghai Street Children's Centre. The Committee put up the premises, whilst Government (through the Social Welfare Office Probation Section) ran the Centre as a probation hostel, a children's club open all day, and a reporting centre for children on probation. At the close of the period under review there were 100 children attending the centre (twenty in residence), and the experiment could be described as a great success.
43. From 1948 onwards representatives of the Prisons Department and of the Social Welfare Office were urging upon the public the need for the formation of an Adult Prisoners' After-Care Society. This work, it was felt, was best done by a voluntary body-even though Government help might be given behind the scenes. It was not, however, until late 1951
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