Social_Welfare_Annual_Report_1962-1963 — Page 7

}

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A DECLARED AIM of public policy in many countries today is that every citizen should be assured of freedom from want and insecurity and equal opportunities for employment, education and the enjoyment of health, whatever his economic circumstances, religion or race; it has come to be widely accepted in western countries that the provision of social services is not to be regarded as a form of charity but rather as a concomitant of citizenship. Social Services often include social security, designed to maintain a minimum standard of living; health and welfare services, to improve mental and physical health and to prevent and treat illness and disability; child care for children who have been abandoned or whose parents are unable to look after them; education to develop each individual's natural endowment to the utmost; youth services to provide leisure time activities; housing; and training and employment services.

2. Within this broad group, social welfare services are those specifically directed towards assisting persons who are not capable without help and support of standing on their own feet as independent members of the community. Not all the services which have come to be taken for granted in Britain or North America are necessarily in existence or in prospect in Hong Kong today. The student will look in vain for a National Assistance Act, a Family Allowances Act or a Blind Persons Act; but the absence of legislation establishing a service in a particular field should not be construed, as will be seen later, as an indication of lack of concern or of specific assistance to those in need on the part either of Government or of voluntary agencies.

3. The provision of basic social services such as housing, educa- tion, medical and health services and water supplies accounts for the major part of public expenditure in Hong Kong. The high rate of natural increase, coupled with the influx of immigrants from China, places a heavy and continuing burden upon an economy which is over- whelmingly dependent on overseas trade and markets and rests upon very few natural endowments save the ingenuity and skill of the people. Plans for the social needs of the population, which now number more than three and a half millions, must therefore be influenced by the

1