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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