The annual Staff Award Scheme is established to acknowledge the outstanding staff and units. It is also designed to motivate such service qualities of care and efficiency; thus to establish a recognized standard for HKCS team.

Among the three award categories, the Outstanding Achievement Awards are granted to services and units, while the awards for Outstanding Service and Professional Performance are presented to individuals.

This year, 'The Merging of Pak Tin and Shek Kip Mei Home Help Service Centres Campaign' from the Home Help Service and ' Youth and Teacher Sharing Team-the New Power' program designed by Yuen Long Outreaching Team are the two service units that won 'The Most Positive Response to Social Needs' and 'The Most Creative Service' awards respectively under the Outstanding Achievement Award Category.

The two winning units had gone through an open examining and sharing session scheduled for the ten program candidates in the first round; and were among the six finalists in the final round of adjudication. Two university personnel were invited to be among the adjudication panel of which also comprised of two representatives from our Management Committee together with our Chief Executive Team.

To the winning programs, the panel of adjudicators applauded at the efforts and the initiation of merging the two home-help teams and commented that it had effectively responded to then the social needs. They also complimented that not only did the merging conserved their resources for the purpose of re-allocating to other needed programs, more significantly, the resulted merge of the two teams had upgraded their service quality.

The concept of 'Youth and Teacher Sharing Team-the New Power' had indeed astonished the panel. The adjudicators commented that it was a creative thought to encourage young people to assume the role of educators providing advice to their teachers in the areas of handling students' problems and conflicts between students and teachers. They recommended the winner unit to share this new practice with more young people.

About the Awarded Programs

“The Merging of Pak Tin / Shek Kip Mei Home Help Service Centres"

In view of the revamping of Community Support Service for elders carried out by the Social Welfare Department, the Home Help Service took the initiative to prepare for the change. The merging of the two nearby home help teams, Pak Tin and Shek Kip Mei (which was completed in 5 phases within one year), had maximized their resources, upgraded the service quality and most of all, provided some value-added services as a result of the merging process. In spite of the challenges the process had encountered, difficulties such as arousing suspicions on cutting manpower, compromising on the standard working mode and dealing with delicate human relationship issues, all of which were eventually overcome and handled successfully.

“Youth and Teacher Sharing Team-the New Power”

Teachers are always considered as moral and authority figures, students are therefore, in the position to be taught and to obey. unfortunately many inter- generational and interpersonal conflicts were aroused and mostly remained unresolved or handled unwisely and improperly. This program introduced an innovative mind-set. It is designed to re-establish the power-relation between students and teachers; to call for parallel communications among them; to support the teachers by inspiring their skills amidst conflict situations through reversing the roles. It was done by asking the students, who had once experienced similar situations or conflicts, to assume the role as educators and to help their teachers to better understanding their feelings and thoughts throughout the process. The reversed role-play helps not merely to teachers gain a new perspective, it has an equal effect on students as well; thus both parties learn to improve their conflict intervention skills throughout the process.