24
1.
KAIFONG WELFARE ASSOCIATIONS: SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES
ON THEIR ORGANISATION AND ON THE PARTS PLAYED BY THE SOCIAL WELFARE OFFICE.
S.W.O. Staff background
There is no officially recognised body of kaifong workers in the Social Welfare Office; a part-time team has been used which in 1951 consisted of the Social Welfare Officer and the following Chinese members of his Relief Section
(a) Mr. C. N. Li the head of the Relief Section and concurrently an
Assistant S.W.2. Full of enthusiasm and initiative, a glutton for work, and with the whole of his Section at his beck and call, he more than anyone else in Hong Kong was responsible for the success so far of the kaifong welfare movement.
(b) Two of the four male Relieving Officers, who were always conscientious
seconds-in-commands rather than leaders.
(c) Mrs. C. N. Li, technically graded as a Children's Officer, and her husband's right hand. She was engaged in child welfare work until more and more of her time wasrequired for developing kaifong work on the women's side.
(a) Six male Assistant Relieving Officers in direct charge of the six
S.W.O. Welfare Centres and all the work done there.
(e) A Chinese writer who knew no English and whose principal work was
to produce the periodical "Kaifong Bulletins".
(f) A dozen coolies attached to the Welfare Centres.
2. From April 1948 when the Relief Section and its six official Free Feeding Centres were transferred to the Social Welfare Office, the whole staff of that Section co-operated in reorganising their work on a wider and more constructive basis. At the same time savings were contrived out of the S.W.0. vote to pay for new wooden huts to replace the Free Feeding Centres' decaying matsheds. All this had its effect on things to come.
3. By the end of 1948 with six small Welfare Centres in place of the old Free Feeding Centres there were opportunities for further experiments in meeting some of the many unsolved problems with which the Social Welfare Office was faced. At this stage a good case could have been made for sub- stantially increasing the staff at the Welfare Centres; but one of the main objections to this was that any such increase could lead too easily to a policy of partially spoon-feeding the community with social welfare services from official Centres, instead of helping the people of Hong Kong to develop
A different course was those services along their own lines for themselves. therefore chosen.
4.
The Approach
At the beginning of 1949 it was decided to try to encourage nearby residents to interest themselves personally in the S.W.0. Welfare Centres'
If this work some of which was demonstratively of direct local benefit. experiment were to succeed the next step would be to make use of that success in order to build up a still wider local interest in all social problems affecting the residents of a district. Clearly some kind of neighbourhood association would then have to be encouraged or developed, though it was difficult to forecast in advance what kinds would be found most suited to the different parts of urban Hong Kong; in any case there could be no question of blindly copying foreign Community Associations of the Western type, though much might be learned from their work and their histories.