“To participate in the development of social welfare in China” is one of our Agency’s five directions. Our two main tasks are to support the development of social work education and facilitate the professionalization and occupationalization of social work in the Mainland. During the year, we endeavoured to strengthen exchanges among social service sectors in the Mainland and in Hong Kong through various activities. We also contributed to the indigenization of social work and training of professionals in the Mainland.
Support Social Work Education in the Mainland
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| Participate in 1st Social Work Festival in Sun Yat-sen University. |
Unlike Beijing or Shanghai where social work education is better developed, southern China lags behind. In response to this, we focused our work on developing social work education in southern China during last year, Thanks to the sponsorship from the CWM/Nethersole Fund, which led to the launch of the Super Neighbor – Project on Enhancing the Development of Social Work Education in Pearl River Delta so that two tertiary institutions in Guangdong have received wide-range support.
Last year, we continued to send experienced staff to provide lectures for the Youth Social Work program of Sun Yat-sen University. We also attended their first Social Work Festival to promote social work to the general public and encourage their students.
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| Our senior staff teach a social work introductory course to year one students of Guangdong Business College. |
Guangdong Business Collage began enrolling students in 2001, and we held workshops to enhance their first batch of social work students to apply theories into their fieldwork with knowledge and confidence. This year, we also sent staff to teach their year one students the introductory course of social work every week at the Sam Sui Campus.
We arranged students from the aforesaid two institutions to visit Hong Kong to widen their scope. On the other hand, senior staffs were sent to supervise the students to carry out placement in Guangzhou.
Since 1992, we have arranged 27 master degree students from the Sociology Department of Peking University to have study visit in Hong Kong, hoping that they can inherit the value of social work and contribute the community in different domains in the future.
Besides, we have received lots of social work teachers, students from different colleges and universities of the Mainland to introduce our work.
Facilitate Occupationalization of Social Work
For a long time, we endeavoured to facilitate occupationalization of social work in the Mainland. In June 2004, the Ministry of Labour and Social Security announced the national vocational guidelines on social workers, Guangdong then followed suit. We have been invited to join their preparatory work, such as drafting questions for the examinations.
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| Mr Ng Shui Lai, our Chief Executive, cum the director of Shanghai Lequn Social Service Agency visited the social workers in Lequn with the staff of our Agency. |
We have been constantly receiving visitors from different organisations in the Mainland to share our practical experiences and visions in social work.
We have also appointed a staff in Shanghai to support the operation of the Shanghai Legun Social Service Agency.
We continuously encourage our staff to concern and participate the work in the Mainland China Social Service Project. Putonghua enhancement course was organised to strengthen our staff Putonghua competency. A Putonghua campaign was launched to promote our staff to speak Putonghua and arouse their concern for the needs of our country.