Social_Welfare_Annual_Report_1963-1964 — Page 23

Changing social patterns have influenced the syllabus: rattan work has rightly been reduced to a hobby and trades like electrical and radio repairing now appear in the curriculum. The educational section has benefited from some of its supervisors having attended in-service training courses run by the Education Department. One of many features of the Home that emphasize the essential normality of its atmosphere is scouting. The new wolf cub pack for the smaller boys is proving a success, and the scout troop flourishes. The Duke of Edinburgh's Award Scheme has also been taken up enthusiastically, and so far four silver and ten bronze standard badges have been earned by boys entering through both scouting and general channels. One boy now out on licence is already training for the gold standard, and eleven others for the silver badge.

39. Under the present law a boy is committed for a maximum period of five years' training, or until he is 18, whichever comes the sooner, although he must stay for a minimum of two years in the Home, after which he is eligible to be discharged on licence. On the average boys stay between two and two and a half years, so that the period of licence or aftercare has to form an important and integral part of the rehabilitation process at which the system is aiming. Supervision after discharge has been reorganized and is now the responsibility of two area officers, one on the island and one in Kowloon. They are the aftercare agents of the Home's superintendent, and they keep the closest liaison with him. There is a caseworker on the staff of the Home who prepares an individual aftercare plan for each lad; he also studies and counsels any boys with special behaviour problems. During this year there were thirty-two admissions to and forty-six discharges from the Castle Peak Boys' Home. The proportion of discharges on licence is increasing noticeably, and they are being granted at a much earlier stage of training, despite the occasional difficulties that aftercare officers encounter in finding suitable work or school places for the boys-and the more occasional difficulty that some boys find in retaining a post once it has been found for them.

40. As mentioned in paragraph 37, the old remand home has closed and the new combined institution, called the Begonia Road Boys' Home, is in process of settling down. There is no reason to expect difficulties, but it would be unfair not to treat a home with three quite separate purposes as experimental. Not only does it take in boys who have been arrested or remanded, or have been committed for a maximum of six months' residential training under the Juvenile Offenders Ordinance, but

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