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Lecture Notes on Family and Elderly Services
Child care services
- Major services: Day Creches (age 0-2), Day Nursery (2-6), Occasional Child Care, etc.
(see SWD homepage for details).
- For Child Care Centres, the major role of the government is to regulate (enforcement of
the Child Care Ordinance), training (of child care workers), subsidize NGOs (5% of the
operating expenses only) and subsidize working poor families (Fee Assistance Scheme).
- Child Care Centres and Kindergarten: SWD looks after the child care centres and ED looks
after the kindergartens. Child care centres focus on care and individual development,
while Kindergartens focus more on education. Child Care Centres and Kindergartens will be
merged in 2 to 3 years time.
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Family Services
- The key service is Family Casework services provided over 40 SWD Family Service Centres
(FSC) and over 20 NGO FSCs. Other services include child custody, adoption, foster care,
family violence, etc. (See SWD homepage for details).
- Quite unlikely many other welfare services, SWD is the major service provider. In many
other services, namely, elderly services, rehabilitation services, and youth services, the
government play very little role in direct service provision. The government serves as a
"funder" in the other services.
- Key issue: Should the government be the major service providers? Issues involved whether
it is more cost-effective if provided by the NGOs, the family services centres also
provide some statutory services (such as application for Care and Protection Order for
children at risk) can be offered by NGOs, whether there is alternative choice for the
service users in selecting government or non-government services, etc.
- Single Parent families: Number of divorce increases. The number of divorce in 2000 is
more than doubled as compare to that in 1990, and six times that in 1980.
- The Government used to take a position that single parent families are just one type of
families and therefore they can be served by the ordinary family services. The Government
used to consider that having separate services for single parents can be stigmatizing.
Until 2001, the SWD changed its mind and started to provide funding for single parent
families service centres.
- The above issue applied to services for new immigrants. It is only until 2000 that the
SWD is willing to provide funding for services targeted at new immigrants.
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Elderly Services
- We have more than 1 million old persons aged 60 or above or 750,000 old persons aged 65
or above.
- By 2021, we would have 2 million old people. By 2041, we would have 3 millions.
- The major challenges are how are we going to finance the elderly services, how to
provide adequate support for the elderly in future years when the elderly population
expands.
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Residential Services
- Mainly include home or hostel for the aged, care and attention homes, and nursing homes.
Under the Hospital Authority, infirmaries are provided.
- While the government is providing funding to NGOS to provide approximately 20,000
residential service places and purchasing over 5,000 places from the private sector. There
are over 500 private elderly homes in the community.
- Issues include continuum of care (whether elderly has to move from one residential
service to another when their health conditions deteriorate), is the level of care
provided by the private homes is adequate, are we going to build enough elderly homes for
the future, can we afford to provide the level of care services in the future?
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Community Services
- The key services are multiservice centre for the elderly (ME), day care centres for the
elderly (DE), social centres for the elderly, and home help/home care services.
- Key issue is service integration, interfacing with health services, and community
involvement in the delivery of services.
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