mould-official and voluntary enterprise striving to face a challenge and to supply a want, jointly and together, through consultation and agree- ment. If there is good will and proper co-ordination, such a constructive example for progress can offer the most sound and rapid results. The initiative in providing welfare services in Hong Kong was taken long ago by voluntary organizations, and there are many agencies that can point with pride to a history of devoted service to those in need stretching back for several decades. The Government itself did not decide to set up a Social Welfare Office until 1948 and, as recorded earlier in this report, it was not until 1958 that a separate Social Welfare Department came into being. Hong Kong is fortunate in always having had a large number of Chinese organizations which contribute generously in work and money to many forms of social service. It has been equally fortunate in the numbers of local and international religious and welfare organiza- tions, many of them named in earlier chapters of the report, which have contributed to its welfare needs through unstinting gifts of money, goods, time, thought, prayer and service. The Social Welfare Department once again most warmly acknowledges these extensive and outstanding services to the community, without which most of the social welfare services available would fail lamentably to measure up in any way to the present needs of the people of Hong Kong, without considering the needs of the future. It is generally accepted that effective social welfare services cover- ing all these different pressing needs can be developed only through the combined efforts of Government and voluntary organizations, both having the same goals and a mutual understanding of how best the common good can be met. This concept lay behind much of the draft statement of aims and policy for social welfare which was laid on the table of the Legislative Council in November and which, as already mentioned, attracted lively and positively critical public debate. The Government's policy for this Department may be tersely summarized as: to ensure that basic social welfare services, whether official or voluntary, are available to those persons who are found, on inquiry by trained and skilled social workers, to be in need. A continued voluntary effort is essential in a free community, if citizens are to have scope for developing and maintaining a sense of responsibility for the well-being of their fellows and if the social welfare services are to rise above the minimum level acceptable to a civilized society which public expenditure on the present basis can provide.
91. There are roughly a hundred substantial voluntary welfare organizations in Hong Kong devoted wholly or partially to providing
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