in danger of forming anti-social habits. The object of the society is 'to encourage self-responsibility, self-help, self-respect and the acquisition of sufficient knowledge and skill to earn an honest living which as a boy achieves manhood will make him a useful member of the Community'. It now has plans for a second centre. The Hong Kong Juvenile Care Centre on the Island has a hostel for similar purposes, but also has provision for five hundred outside children to come in daily. The British Common- wealth Save the Children Fund street boys' hostels in Cherry Street, Kowloon, and at Shau Kei Wan on the Island provide an open house for eighty-eight boys who have taken to the streets. The staff of the hostels try to befriend them and to persuade them either to return to their homes or to go on to such Centres as those mentioned above, where they can grow up to take their places as responsible people in society.
49. These three societies receive Government subventions so that there is a basic public duty to watch their level of attainment and en- courage the pursuit of their aims and objects. All three have made progress in making their services more effective and useful, and the Department has some hopes that its functions of liaison and co-ordination are helping each to see its own place in the grand design of preventive work for juveniles. But humility must be upheld as in all dealings with welfare workers outside the civil service, and it is often a delicate business to steer a passage between merely speaking when spoken to and advancing enthusiastic suggestions, so as to give only the help and advice which will do most good and not to turn reluctant volunteers into an unpaid projection of the civil service. This problem is discussed more generally in Chapter IX below.
50. An encouraging liaison was developed with the Social Affairs section of the Junior Chamber of Commerce, which asked for guidance on how it might help (not merely through the cheque book but also by personal involvement) with the problem of street boys. Its members have since undertaken to inform themselves directly of what is already being done before deciding what else the Jaycees could do.
51. The Hong Kong Discharged Prisoners' Aid Society comes in at the other end of the scale, when the preventive work for juveniles has failed to stop a descent into serious crime and the persistent student has graduated to one of the 'colleges'. This Society and its affiliated agencies, the Salvation Army and Caritas, visit all prisons regularly for interviews and through their caseworkers help any prisoner who genuinely wants to make a fresh start, by counselling and by material assistance where
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