Social_Welfare_Annual_Report_1965-1966 — Page 34

made to encourage the adoption of disabled children both locally and oversea, and no opportunity is missed of trying to place them.

44 The economic and social independence of each family unit is an accepted aim of social work; but this is difficult to accomplish in the congested and changing Hong Kong scene. Various international and other organizations follow accepted international practice in this field in providing loans or grants of cash towards payment of rent, clothing or medical treatment, or for financing a trade, so as to tide families over difficult periods. A leading organization in this field is the Hong Kong Family Welfare Society, the workers of which paid over four thousand three hundred visits to homes, held more than twenty one thousand interviews and gave aid to nearly twenty eight hundred families during this year. The Resettlement Estates Loan Association, the Church of Christ in China, Lutheran World Service, Catholic Relief Services, the Christian Family Service Centre, the Society for the Protection of Children and other agencies render valuable assistance to many thousands of other families. This is only a representative list, and as may be seen in Appendix 6 some of these organizations receive support from the government by way of subvention. Another form of financial aid is through the individual sponsorship of school children by Foster Parents Plan Incorporated, which again helped to pay school fees for more than six thousand five hundred children during the year; its programme also includes private medical care for entire families, loans for business projects and guidance in many family problems. Several other agencies and a number of funds support about twenty two thousand children in school. The Hong Kong Society for the Protection of Children provides residential care for a hundred babies in its crêches. Like other societies, its day nurseries cater for getting on for three hundred children of ages ranging from 2 to 6 years, while its bathing and weighing section looks after approximately three hundred more babies in arms, each of whom is taken by his own mother to one of the society's centres at least once a week. There the baby is weighed, bathed and treated for any minor ailment and the mother is advised on child care and hygiene and provided with a week's supply of milk and vitamins.

45 The number of babies abandoned by their families has continued to fall, from sixty-two to fifty-three in the past year; this compares with over two hundred seven years ago-see Appendix 9. Adoption of children under the Adoption Ordinance 1956 progresses steadily. This applies particularly to adoptions by arrangement between families

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