Social_Welfare_Annual_Report_1961-1962 — Page 8

which share in the task of providing social welfare services in Hong Kong.

3. It is increasingly recognized that the building and maintenance of facilities such as institutions, vocational training centres and community centres and the financing of case work services or of relief measures- whether by Government, or by local voluntary or overseas funds--can only be justified if sufficient numbers of qualified staff are provided to ensure that such facilities and services are used constructively, with discrimination and to full advantage. More support was forthcoming during the year also for measures designed to improve the number and quality of the social workers whose responsibility it is to ensure that the material assistance and other services and facilities are used in the best interests of the people for whom they are intended. It is only through the employment of adequately trained staff that the controlling agencies, whether official or voluntary, can ensure that the services which they provide are such as effectively to assist recipients to over- come their disabilities and to stand on their own feet as productive members of the community.

4. This emphasis on self-help is, of course, not new. Indeed, it is a fundamental principle in social work and has for long been an objective in Hong Kong. In the past year, however, notable progress has been made in furthering this approach. The influence of these constructive ideas may for instance be noticed in the use which voluntary organizations are making of the large sums of money contributed from overseas for welfare work in Hong Kong; the emphasis on rehabilitation and self-help becomes constantly more marked.

5. The achievements of the past year which are recorded in this report, while important in themselves, are the more significant as indications of the determination progressively to improve and strengthen social welfare services. Among the more notable developments recorded in the succeeding pages are some decline in the number of young children abandoned, with a marked increase in adoptions in Hong Kong; a welcome rise in facilities for the day care of children; growing pressure on the Probation Service, indicating the greater confidence of the Courts in its efficacy as a form of treatment of offenders; steady progress in work for the rehabilitation of the handicapped and in community services in resettlement estates and new towns.

6. These developments should assist in focussing greater attention upon social work as an attractive and constructive professional career,

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