Wednesday, April 7, 1976
8
Turning to youth services, Mr. Bray said he did not see merit in
the proposal made by the Hon, Hilton Cheong-leen for setting up an advisory
committee on youth services,
He said: "Public services have to be broken up into various packages
before anyone can usefully deal with them and the Government is committed to
analysing needs for services on a programme basis.
"A programme is a collection of activities designed to achieve a
specific objective. The objective may be defined in fairly general terms but
it is difficult to see how such an objective which was wide enough to embrace
all services having an impact on youth could be precise enough to mean anything."
Mr. Bray also could not see that much good would be served by
attempting to group services in yet another way by age groups of the public
affected.
On the Inter-departmental Committee on Services for Youth, Mr. Bray
said its purpose was indeed to see that someone was filling gaps in services.
"It is in the prosecution of efforts to fill gaps
identifying the gaps that priorities are assessed by the normal government
maonine including advisory committees."
not in
He referred to the gap mentioned by the Hon. Miss Ko Siu-wal
namely services for children of school age who are not at school.
-
"For most of these children it is ordinary schooling that is wanted.
For all the yearning for some substitute services nobody has come up with
anything better,
"The best way to use resources for these children is to provide
schools. It would not make sense to cut down resources for school provision
to provide other services suggested by Miss Ko," he said.
/"But even