4.34
These facilities will be improved and extended to ensure that they will meet the rising expectations of the population and are within easy reach of people of all age groups. Programmes and activities organized from these centres will be directed to promoting community spirit and social responsibility among the local communities. In areas considered to be in special need but which are not covered by existing community facilities, special emphasis will be given to organising and directing local community resources to resolving individual and communal problems. Parallel with these, district machinery will be strengthened to co-ordinate Government and voluntary efforts more effectively in this field.
Family Welfare Services
4.35
The basic element of the family welfare programme - the counselling service - is well- established in Hong Kong, and is now operating on a regional basis, bringing the service closer to the people who need it. For the future, the main task in this field will be to define the roles to be played by the Government and by the voluntary agencies, and experiments towards this end are already in hand.
4.36
In recent years, family welfare services have been expanded to include care for individuals, particularly children, outside the immediate family environment, and it is in these areas that most future development will take place. Child care is at present governed by the Child Care Centres Ordinance and Regulations, and there is a need to review both the effectiveness of this legislation, and the overall relationship between child care centres and kindergartens and to devise a co-ordinated approach to the services provided for pre-school children. This subject is at present being considered by an inter-departmental Working Party on the Care and Education of Children Below Primary School Age whose findings will be incorporated in a Green Paper to be published later this year. A review will also be carried out of the adequacy of services provided for the residential care of children, and of the procedure followed in adoption cases. Precise policy guidelines need to be formulated to govern the provision of home help in cases of family or social need.
4.37
The medical social workers who are assigned to Government hospitals and clinics work closely with doctors and nurses to help patients and their families cope with the many personal problems which often accompany illness or disability. They offer counselling services and have recourse to the many forms of assistance offered by the Government and social welfare agencies to help patients and their families during the period of hospitalization and to assist the patients' reintegration into the community after discharge. Such assistance includes public assistance, compassionate rehousing, vocational training and placements in sheltered workshops.
Probation and Correctional Services
4.38
The probation and correctional services operate mainly in response to the require- ments of the courts and within the framework of legislative authority, and there is therefore little scope from the social work angle for initiating future policy. The probation service will continue to be strengthened as necessary to meet the demands made upon it, and additional institutional facilities will be provided as required. The new Ma Tau Wei Girls' Home has solved the problem of overcrowding experienced at the old home, and a new probation hostel, with a capacity of 60 places, will be built in Tuen Mun in 1981/82 to meet a shortfall in this area. Not all juvenile court magistrates lay the same emphasis on the use of correctional institutions; this leads to fluctuating occupancy rates and difficulties in planning the education and pre-vocational training of the inmates. It is necessary to monitor longer term trends and to examine whether it is possible to change or modify the use to which these institutions are put.
4.39
There is greater scope, however, for the expansion of services in the general field of aftercare. The Volunteer Scheme for Probationers will be expanded to 100 volunteers in the current year and its effectiveness evaluated, while the number of probation reporting centres will
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