ENG-1991 — Page 207

SOCIAL WELFARE

community involvement in the rehabilitation of offenders, volunteers are recruited to befriend probationers and residents of homes and assist them in activities that do not require professional skills and knowledge.

The Community Service Orders Scheme is community-based treatment with punitive and rehabilitative aims. It requires an offender over the age of 14 and convicted of an offence punishable by imprisonment, to perform unpaid work of benefit to the community and to receive counselling and guidance from a Probation Officer. The scheme has been successfully implemented at three magistracies and will be extended to the remaining seven magistracies once resources are available.

The Young Offender Assessment Panel, run jointly by the Social Welfare Department and the Correctional Services Department, provides magistrates with a co-ordinated view on the most appropriate programme of rehabilitation for convicted young offenders aged between 14 and 25.

The Social Welfare Department operates seven residential institutions with a total capacity of 636 places, each with a slightly different training programme to cater for the needs of the residents. Educational, pre-vocational and character training are provided to assist juvenile offenders to return to the community as law-abiding citizens. The Begonia Road Boys' Home and Ma Tau Wei Girls' Home consist each of a remand home and a probation institution for juvenile offenders and youths in need of statutory care and protection. The Pui Yin Juvenile Home is a remand home for boys and girls. The Pui Chi Boys' Home provides residential training for juvenile offenders and youths in need of statutory care and protection. The Castle Peak Boys' Home is a reformatory school for boys aged 14 1/2 to under 16 on admission, while the O Pui Shan Boys' Home is a similar institution for those aged under 14 1/2 on admission. The Kwun Tong Hostel is a probation hostel for young men aged between 16 and 21.

Plans are in hand to improve the residential and training facilities, including the conversion of a youth centre and hostel into a probation home for girls, building a new workshop block at O Pui Shan Boys' Home and the relocation of the Castle Peak Boys' Home and Begonia Road Boys' Home to Sha Tin and Ngau Chi Wan respectively. The qualified teachers recruited to run academic teaching classes have designed new teaching materials to suit the needs and interests of the trainees. The new arrangements have brought about improvements although there have been problems in the recruitment and retention of teachers.

In addition to the work carried out by the Social Welfare Department, several subvented non-governmental organisations also provide hostel, employment, casework and volunteer services to help ex-offenders and young people with behavioural problems to reintegrate into the community.

Family Welfare

The Social Welfare Department and a number of non-governmental welfare agencies provide a variety of family and child care services with the overall objective of preserving and strengthening the family as a unit through helping individuals and families to solve their problems or to avoid them altogether.

The department operates a network of 30 family services centres and the subvented welfare sector operates 23 such centres. The major services provided in family services

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