Social_Welfare_Annual_Report_1958-1959 — Page 25

on medical care, education, training and employment of deaf persons will shortly be considered by the Social Welfare Advisory Committee.

84. The Rotary Club of Hong Kong Island East has given $200,000 for the building of the Victoria Park School for the Deaf which will provide schooling eventually for 120 pupils in addition to the 222 being catered for in two existing schools.

85. Blind Welfare work is at present the most developed of all work for handicapped persons. By the end of March 1959, there were 1,735 blind persons registered with the Department. A casework service is provided, by which advice and assistance is given to blind persons to obtain any voluntary or official welfare service or medical treatment of which they might stand in need. The destitute receive free food.

86. Three clubs for the blind are being run at the old Tsan Yuk Hospital building in Hong Kong for thirty three children, twenty eight adults and thirty four elderly blind. In the children's clubs, the accent is on general education through the medium of braille, besides instruc- tion in handicrafts. The adults' clubs aim at giving the members a better adjustment to their handicap and preparing them for more intensive vocational training whilst the clubs for the aged are mainly of a social and recreational nature. Similar clubs for fourteen children and thirty one adults are being run on the roof-top of Block D in the Tai Hang Tung Resettlement Estate, Kowloon. In addition, the Depart- ment operates on behalf of the Hong Kong Society for the Blind, which provides all the equipment, a vocational training centre with classes in machine sewing and rattan weaving for thirty two trainees as a first step towards providing the workers for a sheltered workshop for 200 which the Society is planning to build. A site in Kowloon has been provisionally allocated by the Government for this project.

87. Pending the establishment of a proper institution for mental defectives requiring institutional care, an ad hoc committee arranged transfers of mental defectives housed in North Point Camp, the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals and the Po Leung Kuk, to allow for more homogeneous grouping and easier management. Apart from about 200 mental defectives known to be in institutions, the Special Welfare Services Section is in contact with thirty two mentally deficient children who are living with their families and is responsible for the care of thirty seven others in North Point Camp. Liaison was maintained with the Child Guidance Clinic of the University of Hong Kong in arrang- ing for assessment of mental deficiency and the giving of advice to parents.

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