independently and constructively; there are over a hundred graduates in the Department, a quarter of these with post-graduate social work quali- fications; and nearly another forty with a two year University training or equivalent. This increased proportion of qualified staff over the figures of six years ago is most encouraging and distinctly higher than seems generally to be recognized. The result is that the Department is now far better equipped to discharge its central task of helping people to overcome their personal handicaps and family difficulties, to adjust themselves to life in the community and to stand on their own feet in a dynamic and rapidly changing society. For this task the social worker requires academic training such as will impart a deep knowledge and understanding of human growth and development, both normal and abnormal, in all its complexity together with skill and resourcefulness based on practical training in the field, combined with experience. With all this, the Hong Kong social welfare officer is a very practical man or woman, as visitors who watch him or her at work are quick to recognize.
SOCIAL SERVICES
2. Social welfare is that branch of the social services for which the social work profession is responsible. But what are the social services? In many countries convention or constitution require that every citizen should be free from want and insecurity and have equal opportunities for employment, education and the enjoyment of health, whatever his resources, his religion or his race; in Western Europe and North America it is now accepted practice that the public provision of social services is not a gratuitous act of charity but a concomitant privilege of citizenship. In this developed form, social services include social security (such that a citizen may maintain a publicly set minimum standard of living); public health and hospital services (to improve his mental and physical health and to prevent and treat any illness or disability); child care (for children who have been orphaned or abandoned or whose parents are unable to look after them); education (to develop each child's natural endowment to the utmost); youth services and community work (to build up a con- structive and corporate citizenry); housing (to provide the soil in which civilization has a reasonable chance of being successfully cultivated); and training and employment services (so that each individual may contribute to the extent of his powers towards the common wealth). If the social worker is to operate effectively in his particular field, he must work hand in hand with his colleagues in all related branches of the social services.
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