Government will take new measures to enhance support for children with special needs and strengthen after school care

6 October 2019

Enhancing support for children with special needs

Promoting children's well-being and providing support for families are part of the mission of the Labour and Welfare Bureau, of which enhancing support for children with special needs has been one key area of our work in recent years. Together with the Chief Executive and the Director of Social Welfare, we visited a nursery some two weeks ago mainly to see the pre-school rehabilitation services provided for children with special needs there. We met and had discussion with some parents to understand their experience and how they feel about the service. Their candid sharing affirmed the importance of providing training for children with special needs as early as possible.

Recognising the importance of early intervention for pre-school children with special needs, the Government regularised On-site Pre-school Rehabilitation Services (OPRS) in October last year and further increased the number of service places to 7 000 earlier this month (October 2), covering over 80 per cent of the kindergartens and kindergarten-cum-child care centres in Hong Kong.

OPRS provides on-site training for children aged below six with special needs in kindergartens or kindergarten-cum-child care centres through inter-disciplinary teams coordinated by non-governmental organisations (NGOs). These teams comprise occupational therapists, physiotherapists, speech therapists, clinical/educational psychologists, social workers and special child care workers. Apart from children with special needs, the inter-disciplinary teams provide professional support for teachers/child care workers and parents through consultation, demonstrations, talks, workshops and seminars.

With parents' and teachers' growing awareness, the number of pre-school children who are identified to have special needs after assessment, namely Tier-2 children, is constantly on the rise. In view of this, the Government will further increase the number of OPRS service places towards the policy objective of "zero waiting time".

The Government will also seek to use the Lotteries Fund to implement a pilot project in early 2020 in kindergartens or kindergarten-cum-child care centres participating in OPRS for a period of 20 months. It aims to provide early intervention for children who show signs of special needs, namely Tier-1 children.

Depending on the results of the evaluative study on the pilot project, the Government will explore the feasibility of integrating this service for Tier-1 children into OPRS for Tier-2 children, i.e. both types of services to be coordinated and provided by the same NGO operator at the school. Under this school-based integrated support model, Tier-1 children may receive support as early as possible, while Tier-2 children who have made significant progress under OPRS may shift to receive Tier-1 training services commensurate with their actual needs, so that comprehensive, flexible and continuous support for children with different levels of special needs at different stages can be provided under this model.

Strengthening after school care

Another enhancement initiative I would like to share with readers is that the Government will strengthen the After School Care Programme (ASCP) at the primary school level. Currently, the ASCP is operated by NGOs to provide support services and suitable care for children aged from six to 12 in the community. Under the Fee-waiving Subsidy Scheme (FWSS), the Social Welfare Department provides fee reduction for children from needy low-income families.

To strengthen support for low-income families, the Community Care Fund (CCF) rolled out a three-year "Pilot Scheme on Relaxing the Household Income Limit of the FWSS under the ASCP for Low-income Families and Increasing Fee-waiving Subsidy Places" in October 2017. A one-third fee reduction subsidy is introduced specially to support eligible children in families with monthly household income above 75 per cent but not exceeding 100 per cent of the Median Monthly Domestic Household Income.

The Government now proposes to regularise the pilot scheme under the CCF and implement a number of enhancement measures on the FWSS, including fee-waiving quotas, application criteria and subsidy level as well as providing additional subsidy for children with special education needs and simplifying the means test procedures.

The Government is very concerned about the healthy development, both physical and psychological, of children and will continue to take various measures to improve the well-being of children.

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