Social_Welfare_Annual_Report_1966-1967 — Page 34

has every reason to be grateful, day care of children aged from 2 to 6 could hardly have expanded so rapidly. The department has helped organizations capable of running new day nurseries efficiently, by supporting applications for grants of land or premises, and in some cases by financial subvention, as well as by training staff. During the year a new code of practice for the grant of Government subvention to operators of approved non-profit nurseries was adopted, and as from 1st April 1967 subvention to day-care nurseries will be available on the basis of up to $10 per child per month, provided that the agency requires such assistance and is able to satisfy the conditions which are prescribed to ensure that the facilities of the nursery are available to those in the greatest need.

47. With the increase in recent years of statutory adoption into families and the smaller number of children now being abandoned, the Child Welfare Section of the Department is able to concentrate firstly 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 always be a substantial number of children who, because of disability or otherwise, are unsuitable for adoption and need long-term institutional care. Efforts are of course made to encourage the adoption of disabled children both locally and oversea, and no opportunity is missed of trying to place them. Another alternative to institutional care, namely foster-care, has not hitherto been considered to offer good prospects for development in Hong Kong, but discussions have taken place during the year with a view to a carefully controlled experiment in fostering being carried out by a well-established and experienced voluntary agency.

48. 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 three thousand three hundred visits to homes, held more than twenty one thousand interviews and gave aid to over two thousand, three 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

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