Children's Fund's recreation centre for retarded children has 40 children attending daily at Wang Tau Hom and the Home of Loving Faithfulness at Fanling cares for 10 children of the severe grade.

105. Construction has begun on an annex building of the Po Leung Kuk which will enable it to increase its capacity for retarded children from 70 to 110. The building was made possible by grants from the Lotteries Fund and the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club. Meanwhile the Combined Hostel and Training Centre for the mentally retarded at Kwun Tong (renamed the Kai Nung Training Centre) already under construction will be completed in the latter half of 1968. It will contain hostel accommodation for fifty adults, vocational training for 100 mentally retarded adults and adolescents and day training for 60 children. The World Rehabilitation Fund Day Centre is planned to provide pre-vocational training for 40 children between the ages of about 14 to 18. In the meanwhile another member of the Department has been sent to the United Kingdom to take a 2-year course arranged by the National Association for Mental Health for the teaching of mentally retarded children.

106. The Salvation Army Home at Cheung Chau, which is being adapted with a grant of $62,000 from the Sir Robert Ho Tung Trust Fund to care for 20 trainable retarded children, will commence opera- tions in mid-1968.

107. In line with the almost universal trend towards shortening the period of institutionalization of the mental patient and improving the after-care services which receive him on discharge from hospital, increasing emphasis is being paid to providing more community and day care facilities. 37 discharged mental patients are either receiving vocational training or sheltered work in various centres run by Social Welfare Department. The Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association, apart from running a half-way house in Hung Hom for 20 people is starting a farm in the New Territories for long-term patients of the Castle Peak Hospital. In November 1967 the Mental Health Association opened a half-way house for 20 people in accommodation in Wong Tai Sin Resettlement Estate.

BLIND PERSONS

108. The Hong Kong Society for the Blind operates a factory providing employment for blind persons on such work as the making of brooms, brushes, wooden crates and boxes, chalk, buttons, mops

35

Page 45Page 46

Share This Page