living in the Princess Alexandra Residential School which is invariably full to capacity. These consultations resulted in a decision to provide a new hostel to be run by the Red Cross with assistance from the department in the form of a Government subvention and with a grant amounting to $57,000 from the Lotteries Fund to meet the cost of conversion of resettlement accommodation into a hostel. Operation Santa Claus gave a further $12,000 for furniture and equipment.
85. In addition to the facilities provided for physically handicapped people at the Aberdeen Rehabilitation Centre, the Social Welfare Department operates two clubs for crippled children at the Tsan Yuk Social Centre on Hong Kong Island and at the Princess Alexandra Community Centre in Tsuen Wan and assists the Lutheran World Service in the running of the Pui Oi Club in Wong Tai Sin, Kowloon. It also collaborates with the Hong Kong Society for Rehabilitation in providing vocational training in two centres in Kwun Tong and Wong Tai Sin where tailoring, printing and sock and woollen sweater making are taught. The departmental settlement for the severely disabled at Kwun Tong, which was opened on 1st September 1965, now has eighteen paraplegic residents and in a nearby sheltered workshop fifty-two disabled people are engaged in assembling for the electronics and plastics industries, thread cutting trousers and making tapestries, and are able to earn a living wage.
MENTALLY HANDICAPPED
86. There are now one thousand seven hundred and fifty-seven mentally subnormal people registered by the department a figure, which there is every reason to believe is very incomplete-largely because there is little point in registering if facilities are very limited. While progress is being made with a number of projects which will afford some relief the progress is slow. Meantime over one hundred children are cared for in voluntary institutions such as the Po Leung Kuk and Precious Blood Orphanage, while the departmental day centres for mentally retarded children at Tsan Yuk and Tung Tau Resettlement Estate provide for altogether one hundred and thirty-eight children; this includes at Tung Tau some pre-vocational training for twenty children aged between sixteen and eighteen, a new development in the course of the year. The Aberdeen Rehabilitation Centre, mentioned in paragraph 75, now accommodates one hundred and fifteen mentally retarded people of all grades and all ages, the British Commonwealth
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