Social_Welfare_Annual_Report_1964-1965 — Page 35

CHAPTER VI

FAMILY AND CHILD WELFARE

64. Many of the mothers of Hong Kong are working women, and factories are difficult places to which to take their young children below school age; yet because the population is mainly young and to a large extent immigrant there are often no older relatives at home who can stay and look after these children. For this reason the chief child welfare need in Hong Kong, apart from the special needs of deprived or handicap- ped children, is widely thought to be more day care centres where little children may be looked after. At present there are forty-six non-profit- making nurseries and fourteen play centres, some sponsored by inter- national agencies but most of them run by Hong Kong organizations. Eleven nurseries for children from 2 to 6 and two play centres were opened during the year; ten thousand five hundred places are now provided in these day care centres, compared with only about three thousand three years ago. But even if one adds to this the profit-making day nurseries and some 40,000 places in kindergarten schools, which are the concern of the Education Department, it is obvious that the needs are still a very long way from being met. UNICEF continues to give most valuable support in expanding day care; nearly HK$300,000 has been given by this body through its regional office in Bangkok towards equipping the existing nurseries, and a similar amount is expected, to bring the total up to thirty new day nurseries to be equipped by the end of 1966. Without this UNICEF backing, day care of 'pre-school' children would hardly have expanded so rapidly. The Department has been doing its best to help organizations capable of running new day nurseries efficiently, by supporting grants of land or premises, or financial subvention where essential, and by training staff; forty day nursery workers were trained in the year and it is planned to double this next year (see paragraph 105 below).

65. With the encouraging increase in recent years of adoption into families and the smaller number of children now being abandoned, the Child Welfare Section of the Department is able to concentrate first on promoting day care and secondly on arranging short-term residential care of children whose families find themselves temporarily unable to look after them properly; but there will unhappily always be a substantial minimum number of children who, because of handicap or otherwise, need long-term institutional care. Efforts are being made to encourage

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