Social_Welfare_Annual_Report_1965-1966 — Page 30

includes electrical and radio repairing. The educational section benefits by attendance of welfare supervisors at in-service training courses run by the Education Department, and classroom training complements social activities and pure recreation-all with the intent of strengthening character and adjustment to at least reasonable conformity with the demands of the society to which the boys will return. Features of the home that emphasize the healthy normality of its atmosphere include its flourishing scout troop and wolf cub pack and its energetic entries into the Duke of Edinburgh's Award Scheme.

37 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 integral part of the rehabilitation process. Supervision after discharge is the responsibility of two designated area officers from the Probation Service, one on the Island and one in Kowloon, who therefore actually work in the areas where the boys have their homes. They are the aftercare agents of the home's superintendent, and they keep in close touch with him. There is a case- worker in the home who prepares an individual aftercare plan for each lad; he also studies and counsels boys with special behaviour problems. During this year there were forty-nine admissions to and thirty-five dis- charges from the Castle Peak Boys' Home. Discharges on licence are being granted at a relatively early stage of training, despite the difficul- ties that the aftercare officers meet in finding suitable work or school places for the boys-and that some boys find in retaining a post. At the year's end forty-seven boys were out in licence. Discharge on licence does not mitigate staff shortages, least of all in a shift system of working.

38 The multi-purpose institution called the Begonia Road Boys' Home is extensively used and is frequently full to its capacity of a hundred and sixty. 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 it serves as a home for boys on probation whom the court may order to reside at a stated place, usually because their own home conditions are so unsatisfactory that supervision alone might not succeed. This means that on the remand side there has to be security without a prison-house atmosphere, whereas on the probation side a semi-disciplined pro- gramme of psychological adjustment is followed in conditions which

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