Social_Welfare_Annual_Report_1968-1969 — Page 30

70. Residential care for girls with personal or family problems is provided by three voluntary welfare organizations. The local branch of the Congregation of Sisters of the Good Shepherd runs the Pelletier Hall which provides residential accommodation, education, domestic and vocational training for about 160 teenage girls between the ages of 14 and 18 who have experienced behaviour problems. A second home, the Mary Stanton Centre (Marycove), provides a similar service for 250 girls some of whom live at home and attend at the centre for training. The Po Leung Kuk has a similar programme of training and residential accommodation for about 80 girls in this category. All three institutions help girls with personal or family problems to re- establish a satisfactory relationship with their families and to readjust themselves to normal life in the community.

PUBLIC ASSISTANCE AND EMERGENCY RELIEF

71. Public Assistance aims at relieving distress and hardship amongst individuals and families as part of a process of helping them to re-establish their independence. Public assistance is available to any person who applies and qualifies for aid, the criteria of eligibility being based on an assessment of the applicant's income or that of his family, if any.

72. Aid under public assistance is given mainly in the form of food. Cooked meals ceased to be issued with effect from January 1969. The majority of persons on relief receive weekly or fortnightly issues of dry rations, each allocation containing fixed quantities of rice, tinned meat, vegetables, tea leaves and sugar. Small cash grants are payable once a month in lieu of dry rations to certain categories of persons for whom aid in the form of food is unsuitable.

73. Applications for public assistance are dealt with by the Division's caseworkers who interview their 'clients' in the various District Offices and Family Services Centres already described, with a view to establishing their eligibility for aid, the extent of their needs and the most appropriate form of aid to be given. Thereafter, and depending on the caseworker's decision, the applicant may collect his dry rations from two food distribution centres, one situated in Happy Valley, the other in Yau Ma Tei. Cash grants are paid from most District Offices and Family Services Centres or may be delivered to the applicant at his home if he is chronically ill or disabled.

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