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SOCIAL WELFARE
adults have been placed in open industry, mostly in textile weaving and spinning mills.
A Working Party was appointed by the Director of Social Welfare in May 1960 to examine the co-ordination of plans for the training and employment of persons with different forms of handicap; it is hoped for instance that the factory to be built by the Society for the Blind will also be able to train people with other disabilities who can perform operations for which sight is required; some centres already train both the blind and the physically handicapped.
The report by Dr L. T. Hilliard, a consultant psychiatrist of international reputation who came to Hong Kong early in the year to advise on the problem of mental deficiency, is mentioned in Chapter 9 There are now nearly 200 mentally deficient children in institutions such as North Point Camp, the Po Leung Kuk and the three hospitals of the Tung Wah Group, but no special provi- sion yet exists for them. The Mental Health Association has been very active in seeking to improve the social climate for the mentally handicapped through public lectures and a seminār.
Residential care of some 1,000 old folks is taken in seven homes for the aged, and four of these have plans for expansion.
Emergency Relief. The climate, the instability of old and over- crowded city tenement buildings, the precarious and congested siting of squatter huts on eroded slopes overhung by massive boulders and the high proportion of the population which lives and works on the sea are some of the factors which combine to make Hong Kong specially prone to natural disasters. The Colony was struck by a typhoon in June, the first direct hit since 1937. 32 people were killed, most of them fishermen drowned trying to ride out the storm in their boats. 224 fishing boats were sunk and 1,088 squatter huts destroyed; many other boats and dwellings were damaged. The Social Welfare Department formed emergency teams to register the homeless in many areas, to arrange for free feeding and temporary accommodation where necessary, and to issue clothing and food supplies in co-operation with the voluntary relief agencies, the Resettlement Department, the Police and the New Territories Administration. Over 30,000 people were regis- tered and provided with two hot meals a day for periods up to a
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