ENG-1959 — Page 246

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HONG KONG ANNUAL REPORT

Shepherd who are specially trained for this rehabilitation work and can accommodate girls who need education and vocational training in a sympathetic environment at Pelletier Hall, an institution which was opened in 1956. During the year the Sisters have increased the capacity of this Home from 128 to 138 and plan to raise it to about 200 in the future. The girls, who are normally under the age of 18 on entry, are educated and taught how to earn a living and run a home of their own. Sixty girls were admitted to the Home during the year and thirty six discharged; most of these secured employment in machine-knitting factories, for which they were trained at the Home.

The Women's and Girls' Section of the Department also advises and helps unmarried mothers and their children; for them a refuge is provided in the Po Leung Kuk, already mentioned under the heading of Child Welfare, where limited space is set aside for them. During the year sixty four unmarried mothers came to the Department for help and twenty were admitted to the Kuk.

Among other types of cases to which the officers of the Section devote much time and thought in giving advice and counsel are victims of indecent assault, family cases involving incompatibility or some moral difficulty, adolescent girls in need of care and protection or girls who have ceased to be amenable to parental control. Wherever possible, some stable form of work is found for those who seek to earn their living.

Care of the Physically and Mentally Handicapped. Voluntary and official welfare organizations both strive to provide services for the handicapped. The Special Welfare Services Section of the Department is responsible for the registration of the physically handicapped, 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 Health 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. The new Hong Kong Society for Rehabili- tation, which sprang from a sub-committee set up in 1957 by the Hong Kong Council of Social Service, intends to provide physio- therapy, limb-fitting and vocational training under medical supervi- sion at a centre to which curable disabled adults will be admitted,