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The Bill also seeks to amend the Protected Places (Safety) Ordinance to provide that an authorised guard may use "reasonable force" in carrying out duties under this Ordinance to bring the provisions in line with the internal orders of the Police and the British forces.
Mr President, the Bill is part of our continuing process of tidying up the statute book by removing anomalies, up-dating provisions and repealing obsolete Ordinances. I commend the Bill to this Council for early passage into law.
End
Social Workers Registration Bill
Following is the speech by the Secretary for Health and Welfare, Mrs Katherine Fok, in moving the second reading of the Social Workers Registration Bill at the Legislative Council today (Wednesday):
Mr President,
I move that the Social Workers Registration Bill be read a second time.
Purpose
The Bill has been prepared in response to a growing awareness among social workers of the desirability of professional self-regulation. Its principal objectives are:
(a)
(b)
Use of Title
to establish a system for the registration of professional social workers; and
to establish a professional code of practice for registered social workers and to discipline those who contravene it.
A major consideration in drafting the Bill was the fact that the term 'social worker' is in wide and general use. Many talented and dedicated workers who may not be able to qualify for registration as social workers have been active in the social work field for many years. And during that time many will have referred to
themselves or will have been referred to as social workers. Their work will have been referred to commonly as social work. We were concerned in drafting the Bill to strike a fair balance between protecting the terms 'social work' and 'social worker' when used in a professional context and allowing such terms to continue to be used more generally in an informal context without inadvertently causing problems for the large number of voluntary workers in this field who are not professionally qualified.