XN000022-1976-04-07 — Page 9

Wednesday, April 7, 1976

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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