3.
Sunday, June 18, 1972
THE SUCCESS OF PROBATION
How Treatment And Counselling Saved One Boy
Social Welfare Department probation officers are encouraged
by the success of one of their colleagues attached to the South Kowloon
Magistracy who was able to persuade one boy to return to the right path
after the drug habit had twice taken hold of him.
They feel the case deserves to be reported, not because it has
ended finally in success, but because there is one ingredient in the case
that makes the boy untypical.
It is that he actively helped in his own cure.
"He is not the only victim of circumstances that collectively
induced him to go wrong, 11 says Mr. Lee Sun-man, Principal Social Welfare
Officer (Probation Services), "but it is possible that a wider knowledge
of the ultimate decision taken by the boy himself, at a critical moment in
his life, will induce others similarly placed to do the same."
Mr. Lee says the "ultimate decision" was the boy's willingness
to spend five months in Shek Kwu Chau for treatment, after he had already
been before the court and was on a year's probation, but had begun once
again to revert to drugs.
Persistent counselling had managed to imprint Shek Kwu Chau on
the boy's mind as a hope, not a degradation and this is the kind of
"breakthrough" Mr. Lee believes probation officers want to see become
more commonplace.
/The boy
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