Social_Welfare_Annual_Report_1964-1965 — Page 22

interpretation of such figures in the void can never produce reliable facts or justify generalized deductions. Furthermore in the easy answers of the past (poverty, slums, depressed social status, broken homes, mental or physical handicaps, lack of sympathetic understanding and so on) one will certainly not find all the root causes of modern delinquency.

35. What follows is a description of how factual situations involving delinquents are tackled by those social welfare officers whose respon- sibilities are to look after such people as the courts refer to them. The methods used are probation, institutional care and aftercare. The voluntary field affords facilities which are ancillary to both the preventive work and the aftercare. The staff shares the same functions and professional attitudes, recruitment and training, as all other social workers, with a special pride of its own. Casework (in all sections of the Department) is more tiring and demanding than desk-workers may suppose, and the doubts and frustrations can exhaust the weaker vessels in mind, body and spirit. The heavy increases in recent years in the number of offenders entrusted by the Courts for probation or institutional supervision may legitimately arouse queries whether the quality and standards of service to all the workers' ‘clients' can be of the same high level as those rendered in the outstanding cases of success which Social Welfare Officers regularly record. Large turnovers, small benefits and quick returns are not this Department's aims, but they are often all that is achieved under present pressures, and the dangers are obvious. It is interesting that the Probation Section is probably the division of the Department with the greatest attraction, and best prospects, for recruits with good honours degrees in general arts subjects who do not possess at the time specific qualifications in social work or social studies.

PROBATION

36. The Probation Service is one main branch of the Probation Section, the other being the management of juvenile correctional institutions, approved schools and probation homes. The work of probation officers is not susceptible to spectacular presentation. It is not self-generating, and is a function of the volume of crime, the detection of crime, the prosecution of criminals and the sentencing policies of the courts. All four of these factors are themselves subject to sundry uncontrollable features, including individual human decisions. One interesting correla- tion this year was that which became evident between the opening of new police stations and the number of prosecutions, and another was the effect of opening new court houses. The new Wong Tai Sin police station

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