Government Social Welfare Office did not set out to sponsor or create artificially any of these associations; its role was purely to encourage any spontaneous and sensible local movements for the formation of one, to act as a link between association and Govern- ment, and to provide technical advice on social welfare.
Youth Work
In Hong Kong early economic and social maturity is forced upon the great majority of the community. Hence youth welfare work has mainly been carried out for boys and girls between the ages of nine and sixteen. This work was suffering two years ago from lack of money, staff, premises, coordination, and sufficient knowledge of the needs of Hong Kong's young persons.
The Government increased its subventions through the Social Welfare Office to voluntary youth organizations, and some increases were made in the Social Welfare Officer's vote for youth work. Help was also given in the same direction by the General Chinese Charities Fund and, in their own districts, by a number of Kaifong Welfare Associations.
The principal defect used to lie in the lack of trained leaders in every branch of youth work. During 1950 a specialist Principal Youth Welfare Officer was appointed to the Social Welfare Office. Her duties included the building of cooperation with voluntary organizations, organizing club leaders' courses, and the development of the Government's own twelve boys' and girls' clubs which in due course were affiliated to the voluntary Boys' and Girls' Clubs Association. In all there were 46 other clubs affiliated to or run by that Association which, with official help, this year sent its field secretary to the United Kingdom for an intensive two-year course in youth work. Towards the end of the year the Girl Guides Association, with the help of a Government grant, was able to invite the former Guide Commissioner for Scotland to visit Hong Kong with a view to overhauling and intensifying the training of Girl Guides here.
The opening of a War Memorial Welfare Centre in Wanchai provided accommodation for five new clubs and a headquarters for the Boys' & Girls' Clubs Association. Under the management of the Children's Playgrounds Association this Centre brought about an excellent degree of practical cooperation between the five different voluntary organizations which it houses, and several others which use it from time to time.
During 1950 the Standing Conference of Youth Organizations, of which the Social Welfare Office and Education Department are full members, worked out a comprehensive policy for official and voluntary youth work. This was still being considered by the Government when the year ended.
The reorganization and expansion of the Probation Service, together with other reforms in connexion with institutional or other treatment for the social rehabilitation of juvenile delinquents, were started at the end of the year with the arrival of a fully-qualified Principal Probation Officer. At about the same time an experienced lady social worker left Hong Kong for England for an intensive preparatory course in moral welfare.
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