Social_Welfare_Annual_Report_1968-1969 — Page 23

A recent amendment of the Industrial and Reformatory Schools Ordinance allows the Director of Social Welfare to discharge a boy on licence after a minimum of one year's stay at the home. The average residence of two and half years will gradually be reduced to one and half years in view of the shorter period of residence required. Aftercare service is an integral part of the total rehabilitation process and failure to allow for the transition from the confinement of an institution to the open life of community living, through skilful aftercare, may undo whatever good work the Home has done for the inmate. Supervision after discharge is the responsibility of an independent aftercare agent who is a trained social worker. He keeps in close touch with the Home's Superintendent. There is a caseworker in the Home who prepares an individual aftercare plan for each lad; he also studies and counsels boys with special behaviour problems. During the year there were forty-eight admissions to and seventy-six discharges from the Castle Peak Boys' Home and forty boys were discharged on licence. The approval of a new and more adequate staff manning scale for the Home has gone a long way to easing the serious staffing difficulties which have been experienced for many years and has given the boys who are committed to the Home a better chance of benefiting from their committal.

48. The multi-purpose institution called the Begonia Road Boys' Home at Yau Yat Tsuen is extensively used and is frequently full to its capacity of a hundred and sixty. Not only does it take in boys who have been arrested or remanded, or who have been committed for a maximum of six months' residential training under the Juvenile Offenders Ordinance, Cap 226, but it also serves as a Home for boys on probation whom the court may order to reside at a stated place, usually because their ownhomes are so unsatisfactory that supervision alone might not succeed. This means that on the remand side there has to be security without a prison-house atmosphere, whereas on the probation side a semi-disciplined programme of social adjustment is followed in conditions which are made as 'open' as possible. The balance of emphasis requires unusual understanding and co-operation on the part of the staff. Reports are submitted to juvenile courts on every boy who has been remanded for inquiries. These reports are based on close observation of the boys by supervisors responsible for them. They give information about their response to the environment of the Home and behaviour generally, and they make a valuable addition to the probation officers' reports. A caseworker from the ranks of the

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