generosity of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. During her brief stay in the Colony, Lady WILLIAMS studied as many facets of the social, economic and political life of Hong Kong as it was humanly possible to observe; she was a shrewd and astute observer; her questions were perceptive, direct-often blunt-but always to the point; and she pin- pointed what will undoubtedly continue to plague efforts to plan social welfare services in anything like a scientific way, that is, the absence of sufficient, reliable data and the lack of research machinery to produce this vital information. By the time this report is in print, copies of Lady WILLIAMS' report in English and Chinese will have been read in Hong Kong and elsewhere.
4 Hong Kong was well represented by mental health workers in- cluding the head of the Department's special welfare services section, at the 18th Annual Meeting of the World Federation of Mental Health in Bangkok between 15 and 19 November 1965. Two officers of the department and representatives of the Universities and voluntary agencies attended the Sub-Regional Workshop on Professional Education in Community Development, in Bangkok, in December 1965. A United Nations training award enabled the principal probation officer to attend the Eleventh International Training Course of the United Nations Asian and Far East Institute for Prevention of Crime and Treatment of Offenders, held in Tokyo from 27 February to 25 March 1966. Two Government officers, one being the head of the Department's relief section and the other from the Labour Department, attended the Asian Regional Training Course in Planning and Administration of Social Security held in Tokyo, 4 September to 1 October 1965. The Assistant Director (Professional) and the head of the youth welfare section repre- sented Hong Kong at the Asian Conference on Children and Youth in National Planning and Development, jointly sponsored in Bangkok from 8 to 15 March 1966 by UNICEF, ECAFE and the Asian Institute for Economic Development and Planning. During the latter part of the year under review a group of social welfare workers drawn from the official, voluntary and educational fields collaborated as a national committee of the International Conference of Social Work in the preparation of a national paper to be presented at the meetings of the ICSW in Washington DC between 4 and 10 September 1966.
THE SOCIAL WELFARE DEPARTMENT
5 An independent department responsible for social welfare has existed in Hong Kong only since 1958 when the Social Welfare Office
3