ENG-1967 — Page 196

SOCIAL WELFARE

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girls was completed during this year. The Po Leung Kuk, one of the oldest of our truly local charitable organizations, offers in- stitutional care to women, girls and their children. The department maintains two day-training centres in which some 200 young women are given instruction in cooking, tailoring, knitting, em- broidery, beading and laundering and are helped to use their leisure time profitably. Engagements in socially more acceptable employment can generally be found for these women, although experience has shown that very rarely is it possible to rehabilitate the older and more hardened prostitutes. The department offers counselling service for husbands and wives with marital problems ranging from deep-rooted incompatibility to other more transient and superficial conflicts.

THE DISABLED

During the year the total number of disabled people registered with the Social Welfare Department rose from 15,008 to 16,912. The World Rehabilitation Fund Day Centre which is expected to be completed by April next year will be operated by the Social Welfare Department, and will provide vocational training, sheltered work and group activities with pre-vocational preparation for about 360 disabled people. Tenders for a combined training centre and hostel for the mentally retarded were called for and the building should be completed by June 1968. This centre will provide hostel accommodation for 50 mentally retarded adults, and 100 vocational training places for adults and 60 day training places for mentally retarded children.

The Lotteries Fund made a grant of $140,000 for two additional storeys to the Advanced Training Centre for the Blind, run by the Hong Kong Society for the Blind. It also made a grant of $400,000 towards the cost of a new wing for mentally retarded children at the Po Leung Kuk. Construction was well in hand before the end of the year.

A new hostel for physically disabled adolescents was due to open at the Tsz Wan Shan Resettlement estate in January 1968. This project, also financed by official funds, is to be run by the Hong Kong Red Cross.