ENG-2005 — Page 242

200 | Social Welfare

District Support Scheme for Children and Youth Development

The Government allocated $15 million annually to the department to organise the District Support Scheme for Children and Youth Development starting in the 2005-06 financial year. The scheme, which started in September, provides funding for administrative districts of the SWD to run district projects and provide direct cash assistance to help the young from birth to 24 in disadvantaged circumstances. The money is used to meet the expenses involved in education, job skills training and employment, social exposure and potential development.

Social Welfare Programmes

Family and Child Welfare

The overall objective of the family and child welfare programme is to preserve and strengthen the family as a unit by assisting individuals and families to identify and deal with their problems, prevent problems from arising and provide for needs which cannot be met from within the family. A comprehensive network of family and child welfare services is provided by the SWD and NGOs.

Services for Families

The SWD adopts a three-pronged approach to providing a range of services to support families.

At the primary level, problems and crises are avoided by early identification and through publicity, education and empowerment. The publicity campaign, 'Strengthening Families and Combating Violence', continued during the year. The allocation of additional resources helped improve central and district-level publicity activities to strengthen family solidarity, encourage people to seek help early and prevent violence (including spouse battering, child abuse, elder abuse and sexual violence). The department's hotline service gives information on social welfare services and immediate telephone counselling to individuals and families facing crises. In addition to providing training to help workers identify and intervene early in domestic violence cases, the department commissioned the HKU Family Institute to conduct a series of seminars from November to January 2006 on basic awareness of domestic violence in eight locations across the territory for over 3 000 related professionals, such as social workers, police officers, medical personnel and teachers, and district personnel, including district council members.

At the secondary level, there is a range of support services, from developmental programmes to intensive counselling. The SWD completed the re-engineering of family services in March and, through pooling of resources, a total of 61 IFSCs were set up to provide services which include family life education, parent-child activities,

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enquiry service, volunteer

volunteer training, an outreach service, therapeutic, developmental and educational mutual support groups and programmes, and a counselling and referral service for individuals or families in need. There are also two NGO-run integrated services centres serving specific areas in Tung Chung and some parts of the outlying islands. During the year, the SWD also tapped additional resources to strengthen manpower and cover other expenses of the centres.