Social_Welfare_Annual_Report_1965-1966 — Page 55

Hong Kong Council of Social Service which has the major role, with about seventy affiliated organizations and a growing permanent staff under an Executive Director. One of the major functions of the Council of Social Service is its information work. This is accomplished by such means as a regular news-letter, a booklet listing the affiliated voluntary organizations, an interpretative leaflet and a Chinese periodical publica- tion; the council also offers facilities to visitors and local residents who wish to know more about welfare services. An important new project undertaken in 1965 was the collation of facts from official and voluntary welfare sources which will be published as the first comprehensive direc- tory of welfare services and resources in Hong Kong. The Councils' projects during the past year included the invigorating experience of sponsoring a joint programme, involving five voluntary agencies, the police force and the government departments of resettlement and social welfare, to co-ordinate the clearance of the remaining street-sleepers and their rehousing-some in a specially constructed hutted village provided by voluntary agencies from oversea funds. As a result less than thirteen hundred of these homeless people are thought still to be living in their old way with no roof of their own, and one more familiar Hong Kong problem is nearing solution. Other committees formed to exchange ideas and influence policy were that on educational sponsorships and that on day nurseries (the latter one divided into two English sections and one Chinese).

98 The Lotteries Fund has made possible two joint projects: a sum of $25,000 was alloted to enable the Hong Kong Council of Social Service to survey the social welfare needs of Chai Wan, as a preliminary to planning the services to be built into a departmental community centre which will shortly be erected there with the World Refugee Year funds raised locally; and a million dollars were allocated to the council for a social research project which will study present day Chinese urban family life. Lack of research, lack of facts, lack of elementary knowl- edge, have been for some years the complaint of all social workers in Hong Kong. Now a start is to be made. This major project will be under the joint auspices of the department and the council but will in fact be supervised by a committee of academics and leading citizens (see Appendix 4). It is hoped that the director of research will be appointed shortly.

99 The Social Welfare Advisory Committee, which is appointed by the Governor, provides the government with the considered opinions of prominent citizens, many of whom are active in voluntary agencies; all

43

Page 55Page 56