from initial medical treatment through vocational training to final resettle- ment in employment and self-reliance. Meanwhile the total number of handicapped people registered with the Department continued to rise, and at the end of the year exceeded eleven thousand. The rate of annual registrations appears at Appendix 9.
43. One of the most enterprising projects for the handicapped, run by voluntary effort with strong financial support from public funds in the early stages, is the factory run by the Hong Kong Society for the Blind; this is equipped with modern machinery and provides employment for the present in machine sewing, broom, brush and button making, crate and box construction and mending, and chalk making. It employs a hundred and thirty-five workers, including some with a handicap other than blindness. The number of blind persons registered rose to over four thousand during the year. Apart from those at the factory, forty-five others were found employment. Three departmental clubs are run for the benefit of nearly eighty blind persons, to assist them to adjust initially to their handicap. A Centre for the Blind is being built with Rotary Club Funds at Shau Kei Wan, to be devoted to the rehabilitation of the older blind. The Canossa School for Blind Girls and the Ebenezer School and Home received increasing support and guidance from the Special Educa- tion Section of the Education Department.
44. Over eighteen hundred deaf persons were registered by the end of the year. A report by Dr. D. R. FRISINA, (Professor of Audiology and Director of the Hearing and Speech Centre at Gallaudet College, Washington), on the Education Aspects of Deafness in Hong Kong, has recommended concerted action by the Education, Social Welfare and Medical Departments in rehabilitating the deaf; this report is still being studied. In conjunction with the Medical Department a publicity campaign was mounted with posters and pamphlets, to encourage early reporting to specified clinics of symptoms such as hardness of hearing.
45. The Victoria Park School for the Deaf took in seventeen more children; almost a hundred deaf children are now in school. Another hundred and thirty-nine places are available in the three clubs operated by the Department at Wong Tai Sin, Lei Cheng Uk and Tsan Yuk. But there are still three hundred and thirty-one deaf children on the register who are neither in a special school nor in a club. More than seventy were given financial aid towards their schooling by Lutheran World Service, and nearly a hundred and ninety received hearing aids purchased with
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