CHAPTER X-PUBLIC ASSISTANCE
99. Public assistance, whether in the form of ordinary day-to-day relief, or emergency relief following upon fire, flood, or other disaster, is the special responsibility of the Relief Section. This is the oldest Section in the department, and was the core around which the Social Welfare Office began to grow when it was established in 1948. It had, before then, been the Relief Section of the Medical Department, and had already had long experience in handling relief work.
100. The staff of the Relief Section is responsible for the running of six official centres (three in Hong Kong and three in Kowloon) and two relief camps. (See Appendix XI).
101. For those who apply to one of the six Social Welfare Centres, public assistance takes the form of relief in kind. Mainly, for those who are destitute, in the form of one cooked meal per day for each member of the family. The meal is not intended to provide a complete diet for the recipient, and it is assumed that some food can be obtained from other sources. Experience has shown that it is very easy in Hong Kong to make people dependent, and when they become dependent they lose the will to make any effort to help themselves. The present system of providing a supplementary, and not a complete diet, is based on the assumption that those receiving help will still need to continue their own efforts to find some kind of living for themselves.
102. Apart from relief in the form of food (either cooked or as dry rations when thought desirable) the six Social Welfare Centres perform a variety of services for the people who attend them, such as writing letters for illiterates, referring urgent cases for medical treatment, helping applicants to get their children into schools, and so on. These are services very similar to those provided in England by a Citizen's Advice Bureau, and in Hong Kong by a number of voluntary agencies, in particular the highly efficient Family Welfare Society, which also has its centres on both sides of the harbour.
103. The case-load of the six welfare centres was very heavy during the period under review.
104. Nearly 3,600 families, or about 10,000 persons were helped with either free meals or dry rations during the year.
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