ENG-1958 — Page 232

188

HONG KONG ANNUAL REPORT

Chamber to the Department continued to serve children in the New Territories.

A second storey was added to the Thomson Memorial Hostel run by the Salvation Army, which now accommodates 154 young workers. On the opening of its new Maurine Grantham Residential Centre at Yau Yat Chuen, the Y.W.C.A. converted a nursery in Sham Shui Po into a hostel for 66 factory girls. The need for cheap hostel accommodation for young people is still acute.

Staff training again occupied much of the time of experienced personnel. The Department ran a Youth Leadership Training Course, in conjunction with the Grantham Training College. At the beginning of the year two Girl Guide Leaders returned from Australia after an intensive five weeks' training course and have since been conducting courses especially for non-English-speaking Guiders. The Girl Guides' Association, with financial assistance from the Government, was able to invite a Trainer from the United Kingdom to spend a year in the Colony, starting in November, to help train Guide leaders. For the first time, the Boy Scouts' Association organized a course for its Training Team of twenty seven members, which proved very successful. In their turn, the Training Team had a busy year training Scouters, and over 300 certificates were issued to Scouters for passing various tests.

Youth work in Hong Kong is co-ordinated by the Standing Conference of Youth Organizations, on which the Department and all the main organizations in this field are represented; this federal body also runs the Silvermine Bay Camp through a Committee.

Care of the Disabled. Voluntary and official welfare organiza- tions both strive to provide services for the physically and mentally handicapped. The Special Welfare Services Section of the Depart- ment is responsible for the registration of the physically handi- capped, the blind and the deaf and co-operates closely in the planning of rehabilitation facilities; in these the voluntary agencies and the Education, Medical and Labour departments all play their part in a common effort to help the disabled to live useful lives. The Society for the Relief of Disabled Children cares for fifty four crippled children at its Sandy Bay Children's Sanatorium.