9
Social Welfare
SINCE its re-organization in June 1967 the Social Welfare Department has discharged its functions through four main divisions: the Group and Community Work Division, the Family Services Division, the Probation and Corrections Division, and the Training Section. Three of these represent, with comparatively little change, similar units that existed before. The largest, the Family Services Division, is an amalgamation of services provided in the past by units working separately on problems relating to the welfare of children, the protection of women and girls, the relief of the destitute and the rehabilitation of the disabled. Their amalgamation under one divi- sion was intended to provide advice and assistance to persons in need on a family-wide basis rather than an individual basis.
The process of re-organization was coupled with measures taken to make the department's family services more readily available to the public through the establishment of district offices, of which there are at present four. The first district office came into operation in 1965; situated in the Western Magistracy, it serves the needs of the population living on Hong Kong Island west of Garden Road and of those on the offshore islands. The second, opened in 1966 and situated in the Causeway Bay Magistracy, caters to the needs of people living east of this boundary. The third and largest is the Kowloon District Office, which was opened in 1967 and provides services for the remainder of Kowloon including the New Terri- tories. The fourth, operating from the Un Chau Street Post Office Building since September 1968, serves the population of North West Kowloon.
Close co-operation between the department and the many voluntary agencies which play so important a part in the provision of social welfare services has continued during the year under review. Appendix XLV lists 81 agencies which are member organizations of the Hong Kong Council of Social Service. Many of these receive a government subvention but substantial sums
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