Social_Welfare_Annual_Report_1954-1955 — Page 29

lessons in lip-reading. The Overseas Chinese School for Deaf and Dumb ran primary school classes for 33 day-pupils. Aid for this school to expand its premises and scope of training was under active consideration by the Rotary Club of Hong Kong (Island East) which reserved some of its charitable funds for this purpose.

72. The Mission to Lepers, Hong Kong Auxiliary, looked after 375 patients at its settlement on Hay Ling Chau Island. There, training in a variety of occupations such as gardening, tailoring, carpentry, etc. is open to lepers who can hope to return to a normal life, while those who have been crippled by the disease do embroidery and other handwork by which they help to support themselves.

73. A Government Welfare Centre at Lantao Island, designed primarily to take in the approximately 500 disabled ex-Nationalist war-veterans and their families who were being fed by the Social Welfare Office at Rennie's Mill Camp, was ready to function by the end of the period under review. However, at the last moment, plans by the Nationalist Govern- ment to repatriate these people to Formosa began to materialize and the idea of taking them to Lantao was abandoned. This new centre will be run by the Social Welfare Office for the training and rehabilitation of other destitute physically handi- capped persons in the Colony between the ages of 18 - 65.

74. No special facilities exist yet for the care of crippled children but plans were made by the recently established Society for the Relief of the Disabled to build a convalescent home at Sandy Bay to take in, initially, 25 crippled children who could be nursed back to health and vigour.

75. In September, 1954, the Hong Kong Council of Social Service appointed a sub-committee to inquire into the feasibility of a scheme for the care of mental defectives and to submit a report to the Social Welfare Advisory Committee. The sub- committee concentrated its inquiry on the care of mental defective children and on making a study of what was actually being done for such children, who up till then were sheltered mainly in orphanages and other children's institutions.

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