Social_Welfare_Annual_Report_1970-1971 — Page 14

(b) A second home, the Mary Stanton Centre (Marycove), provides a similar service for 250 girls, some of whom live at home and attend the centre for training.

(c) The Po Leung Kuk has a similar programme of training and

residential care for about 80 girls in this category.

24. All three institutions help girls with personal or family prob- lems so as to re-establish a satisfactory relationship with their families and eventually to readjust themselves to normal life in the community.

25. The Department itself runs two day centres for girls, that is, the Chai Wan and Tung Tau Girls' Centres. These provide pre-voca- tional training courses for girls who are unfit for ordinary schools or who have behaviour problems, thus helping them to acquire a sense of orderliness, self-discipline and self adjustment.

REHABILITATION

26. In the field of rehabilitation the Department continued to aim at providing the opportunity to disabled persons to become as far as possible independent and self-supporting members of the community. This generally involves three processes:

(a) treatment to help the disabled to adjust themselves to their

disabilities;

(b) vocational training and other forms of training to encourage them to make the fullest possible use of their residual capacity; (c) restoration to society through placement in remunerative em-

ployment or appropriate schooling.

27. The Department is concerned with the rehabilitation of four main groups of disabled persons, namely, the mentally retarded, the blind (or visually impaired), the deaf (or hard of hearing) and the physically handicapped. Social and vocational rehabilitation services are provided in institutions, clubs, centres and workshops administered by the Department and by voluntary welfare organizations. (Please see Appendices 19 and 20).

28. Mental retardation is a handicap which may be congenital or may arise as a result of severe illness. There is no specific cure for it. The Department is responsible for the rehabilitation of mentally retarded persons who are intellectually incapable of attending a normal school but are not so severely retarded as to require constant

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