mentally and socially handicapped. Nevertheless, the impact of official and voluntary provision is uneven and some kinds of disability are certainly much less adequately provided far than others. Urbanization and industrialization has in Hong Kong, as elsewhere, loosened family obligations and the disabled have lost much of the support traditionally given to them by their families. These developments continuously draw attention to the need for provision by society of rehabilitation services which effectively transform those suffering from disability into self- respecting contributors to the economy of the community. The Special Welfare Services Section is the part of the Social Welfare Department which is most concerned with the problem of the disabled of all kinds. It maintains registers of the various groups of disabled, provides counselling services, has established institutions, clubs, training centres and sheltered workshops and liaises with those departments and volun- tary agencies working in these fields.
75. The largest institution maintained by the department is the residential Rehabilitation Centre at Aberdeen which, in collaboration with the Medical Rehabilitation Centre of the Hong Kong Society for Rehabilitation and the Surgical Appliance Centre of the Medical and Health Department, makes an important contribution to the continuous process of rehabilitation which begins with initial medical treatment and proceeds through vocational training to final self-reliance and resettlement in employment. At the end of the year there were three hundred and twelve residents and training was being offered in leather work, tailoring, light mechanics, gardening, carpentry, printing, electrical appliance repair and domestic services. The aim of the Centre is, to some extent, being frustrated by the paucity of facilities available elsewhere for the care of certain groups for whom rehabilitation as independent wage earners is either impracticable or of very limited application but who have been accepted as residents of the Centre because there is nowhere else for them to go. The aged, the chronically sick, the severely mentally retarded and discharged mental patients with residual disability now share the Centre with the deaf, dumb, the trainable retarded, cured leprosy patients and others suffering from a physical disability, such as amputees and persons on whom tuber- culosis has left its mark. Despite this, intake during the year amounted to one hundred and forty-nine and one hundred and thirty-six were discharged.
76. On 2nd March His Excellency, the Governor opened the John F. Kennedy Spastic Children's Centre which was built with World
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