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know what can be done for the disabled and use it; are prepared and proud
to work in rehabilitation and special care services to do it; will
encourage the handicapped, particularly their own relatives while they
are being rehabilitated; and finally will welcome the rehabilitated back
into the community and not forget their special needs.
I believe our plans for the expansion of buildings and
services are well founded on the pooled experience of professionals and
administrators; our workers are expert and devoted and the work being
done is of high quality. Quantity is inevitably still lacking, but will
become more adequate as the phases of the White Paper are progressively
implemented. We realise we are only at the beginning of a long and
difficult road, nevertheless progress made and provided for is already
something of which we can be proud.
But we do run up against human factors which I believe it
is one of the principal objectives of the campaign in the Year of the
Disabled Persons to overcome. For instance I appeal to child care centres
to be more willing to accept the small number of disabled children offered
by Social Welfare Departmont; I appeal to student teachers to apply in
greater numbers for training as special teachers; and I appeal for more
sponsors either for special classes for slow learners in ordinary schools
or for new special schools for mentally handicapped. In this year the
Government and private developers too must consider whether in the pressures
of construction access for the disabled is not unnecessarily or thought-
lessly built out of streets or institutions or housing blocks.
Hong Kong is an intensely practical place, and I hope that
our response to the Year of the Disabled Persons will be practical too.
/Finally I