Save the Children Fund's recreation centre for retarded children has over fifty children attending daily at Wang Tau Hom and the Home of Loving Faithfulness cares for eight children of the severe grade.

87. Work on the construction of a Combined Hostel and Training Centre for the mentally retarded is expected to commence shortly. When completed in 1968 it will contain hostel accommodation for fifty adults, vocational training for a hundred mentally retarded adults and adolescents and day training for sixty children. Also in Category A of the Public Works Building Programme is a home for two hundred severely retarded children which will be administered by the Medical and Health Department. The World Rehabilitation Day Centre, con- struction of which is also due to begin soon, is planned to provide pre- vocational training for forty children between the ages of about fourteen and eighteen. These projects will carry the implementation of the Hilliard Report a stage further but will not satisfy even the known needs of the severe and medium grades.

88. Care of discharged mental patients is largely undertaken by social workers of the Mental Health Service of the Medical and Health Department, but additional casework services are provided for selected patients by this department, Lutheran World Service and other voluntary agencies which provide funds for rent, capital for hawking, and other forms of aid. The Social Welfare Department also provides a limited casework service for persons of mild mental disturbance for whom compulsory treatment cannot be arranged. The New Life Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association, which was largely founded by former mental patients with the encouragement of the Mental Health Service of the Medical and Health Department, runs a half-way house between hospital and community for discharged patients who are homeless or who for some reason or other need a period away from unsatisfactory homes. This facility is now severely overtaxed and other hostels are urgently needed to ease the pressure on hospital beds and to encourage a quicker return to the community. Plans are well advanced for the operation by the Mental Health Association of another 'half-way' house; the first year's running expenses have already been raised and premises are available in Wong Tai Sin.

THE AGED

89. Because Chinese tradition has always attached importance to the care of aged members of the family, the care of old people in Hong

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