it serves as well as a hostel for boys on probation whom the court may order to reside at a stated place, usually because their home conditions are considered so unsatisfactory that supervision alone might not succeed. Begonia Road Boys' Home has not yet been filled to its full capacity of a hundred and seventy. A total of just under two thousand four hundred juveniles were admitted, and the average daily muster reached one hundred and seven. These figures include a small number of girls until December when Ma Tau Wei Girls' Home opened. This home is also going through an experimental period: it has been open for too short a time for any significant figures to be quoted. Almost six hundred and forty reports were submitted to Juvenile Courts on boys remanded for inquiries. These are based on observation of the boys by the supervisors who are respon- sible for them. They give information about their conduct, attitude, response to treatment in the Home and behaviour generally, and they make a valuable addition to the probation officers' reports in painting the social picture of each boy for the courts in true colours and perspective.
VOLUNTARY WORK
41. Officers in this as in other sections have continued to play an active part in helping the work of voluntary societies, mainly through acting as advisers or observers on committees. The Society of Boys Centres gives a helping hand to about a hundred and forty poor boys between 8 and 16 years of age. Half of these actually live in at the Centre in Shing Tak Street. They are boys whose home conditions are such that they have difficulty in coping with life and are in danger of forming anti-social habits. The object of the society is 'to encourage self-responsibility, self-help, self-respect and the acquisition of sufficient knowledge and skill to earn an honest living which as a boy achieves manhood will make him a useful member of the Community'. The Hong Kong Juvenile Care Centre on the Island is a hostel for similar purposes, but also has provision for seven hundred children to come in daily to the Centre. The British Commonwealth Save the Children Fund Street boys' hostels in Cherry Street, Kowloon and at Shau Kei Wan (the latter was opened by Lady BLACK in October) provide an open house for boys who have taken to the streets. The staff of the hostels try to befriend them and to persuade them either to return to their homes or to go on to one of the Centres where they can grow up to take their places as responsible people in Society. The Hong Kong Discharged Prisoners' Aid Society comes at the other end of the scale, when the preventive work for juveniles has
18
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.