Social_Welfare_Annual_Report_1963-1964 — Page 7

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

SOCIAL WORKERS

WHAT is 'social welfare'? The answer of the man in the street to this question is not likely to please anyone who looks for precision in public affairs, whether he be social student or taxpayer or intelligent observer of the human scene; certainly the thoughts of the man in the street on the subject have often been vague in the extreme. One purpose of the present report is to bring this branch of the social services into clearer focus. Social work as an academic discipline in the universities and as a distinct profession, both in central or local government and in the unofficial areas of community service, has long since achieved respect and recognition in Western Europe and North America. In Hong Kong it is not claiming too much too soon if we rest content with saying that the last year has been a recognizable 'end of the beginning'. The following chapters of this report will show to an unbiassed reader that, whereas it may have been fair comment some few years ago that workers in the social welfare field were-however devoted and hardworking-more often than not amateur and possessed of no uncommon skill, both the approach and the permanent cadre of to-day's social workers is uncompromisingly professional. Certainly there is a good way further to go and the profession has no ground for complacency or self-righteousness; but the process of creating a high professional competence is now well advanced and social work here can reasonably claim to be judged by universal standards. Hong Kong tends to judge itself by its enormous industrial achievements but the mass of outside world opinion judges it rather by its capacity to provide its people with developing social services. Hong Kong may now at last begin to cast shame aside, even to exhibit some pride, in its own attitudes to its internal social problems, not only in the fields of health, education and housing but also in that of social work. One justification for this new-found frame of mind may be seen in Appendix 1, which shows the proportion of social welfare officers in the Hong Kong Social Welfare Department who have academic qualifications, or at least such a higher educational training as should have taught them to think

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