or the special needs arising from any particular disability suffered by a member of a family. A thorough review of the scheme was therefore undertaken in 1968.
7. An inter-departmental Working Party appointed in February 1966, and which reported in April 1967, to consider certain aspects of social security in Hong Kong had already recommended amongst other things that public assistance in the form of financial assistance, with the aim of relieving destitution, should be accepted as a responsibility of the Government. The cost would be met from public funds and the scheme would be administered on the basis of a suitable means test related to an acceptable level of subsistence.
8. By February 1969, the Department was in a position to put forward proposals for an extended public assistance scheme of a more liberal kind and no longer based on relief in kind. They included firstly, the relaxation of the criteria by equating adults with children and abolishing the existing practice of counting a child under 9 as half an adult; raising the notional income from $40 to $50 per person per month as a base figure and measuring the need and level of assistance in accordance with a sliding scale; and reducing the qualification of 5 years' residence in the Colony to one year. Secondly, the Department proposed that Government should accept full financial responsibility of the revised public assistance programme. Voluntary agencies currently engaged in giving financial assistance to needy families would then be encouraged to direct their funds and resources either to supplementary measures of assistance outside the programme or to other fields of welfare activity.
9. The stage had now been reached where it was necessary to obtain expert advice on whether the proposals were generally practicable and on how a scheme on the lines proposed might be mounted in terms of practical administrative details. Mr T. S. HEPPELL, an experienced officer in the Department of Health and Social Security of the UK Government arrived in January 1970 and spent a month in Hong Kong advising on the administrative structure required for the new scheme, the formulation of rules for investigation, assessment and review of cases, the appropriate use of different methods of distribution of cash payments and the levels of staff required and the appropriate training of staff required at each level.
10. A revised scheme was approved by Government in March 1970 and the Department has since engaged itself in the production of
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