Responding to the challenging environment for social services in recent years, Hong Kong Christian Service went through a major restructuring exercise in July 2003. One of the initiatives was the establishment of the Service Development and Research Core Business (SCB) aiming to support the agency service development.

There are many ways for an agency to continue developing its services. For instance, unmet needs are identified and met with new and innovative services. The agency may expand its existing services to satisfy any increasing demands; may further establish, consolidate or improve its delivery models for more effective implementation, integration or collaboration among its other services to enhance outcomes. The ultimate goal is to keep abreast with and provide services that meet the ever-changing needs in the society.

Considering the fundamental function of service development, it should become an integral part of all direct service units. The responsibility of SCB is to focus on the formulation and implementation of agency-level strategies, cross-service coordination, mobilization of staff actions, and management of central information and knowledge. Among these, research is a basic and necessary instrument to help finding new service needs, to provide empirical evidence on service gaps, as well as to examine the effectiveness of new service models.

Much emphasis shall be put on staff participation. It is believed that the staff at the forefront has the highest level of sensitivity toward clients' changing needs and the existence of service gaps. SCB collects ideas through various mechanisms to collect ideas and to formulate actions for development. In the process, focus groups, discussion forums and daily consultations are among the more frequently used methods. To ensure the SCB quality, a Service Development Committee has been set up with professional members from different direct services to explore development in diverse dimensions.