Social_Welfare_Annual_Report_1966-1967 — Page 39

the expected child, or to make arrangements with the putative father for maintenance or a financial settlement, or to seek care and adoption of the child by someone else.

59. Girls in moral danger account for the largest number of those who are helped by this part of the department; services include guidance both to themselves and to their parents and help in finding suitable jobs. Vocational training is often necessary, to attract their interest, to keep them under close observation and to provide suitable skills for future employment. Girls who have been victims of sexual assault are interviewed to determine whether there have been any significant psychological or physical effects; if there have been, intensive counsel- ling or referral for medical treatment may be required. They may also be helped, where it is necessary and possible, to change their environ- ment, to train for employment or to enter an appropriate home or friendly institution. The staff concerned have been given special attention in recent departmental evaluation and development exercises, with emphasis on the study of the dynamics of behaviour in the individual human being for theory as well as on the practical remedies afforded by vocational activities. Prevention in this field comes best at an early age in the shape of proper education, moral instruction and a loving but not unduly permissive upbringing; cure after early ado- lescence is a complex process and no worker, however skilled, can guarantee to effect it.

60. The two departmental centres at Tung Tau and Chai Wan pre- viously known as 'Vocational Training Centres' are now referred to as 'Girls' Centres'. Their aim remains the same: to help women and girls to self-respect and independence through building up social rela- tionships, showing how leisure can be used fruitfully and guidance into fields of employment, interests, ability and opportunities. These centres provide what may be called a semi-institutional setting, where up to two hundred young women receive instruction in cooking, tailoring, knitting, embroidery and beading or laundering during a year; the numbers of those in the department's care who found work for them- selves after training or who obtained employment in factories, shops, offices or households, or were married may be studied in Appendix 14. Group therapy is in practice at the centres where groups of ten girls with behavior problems are encouraged to discuss and thrash out these problems among themselves at weekly sessions. These meetings prove helpful to the participants and are a valuable supplement to individual counselling.

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