New Sidewalk Support Scheme Granted Gold Medal at the 2017 Best Practice Awards in Social Welfare

Date: 01/11/2017

Our Kwun Tong Happy Teens Club is responsible for the "New Public Housing Estate Sidewalk Support Scheme" for two large public housing estates in the Anderson Road Development – On Tat Estate and On Tai Estate.  This programme was chosen among a record-breaking 100 plus competing projects to win the "Non-Theme Gold Award" at the 2017 "Best Practice Awards in Social Welfare” Scheme organized by the Hong Kong Council of Social Service.

The awards ceremony took place on November 1 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre.  Professor Ngai Sek-yum Steven, from the Department of Social Work of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, praised, on behalf of the judges, the enthusiasm of our employees for using outreach to fill gaps in social services. He also highly affirmed the effectiveness of the various evaluation tools and of the community network establishment.  Such diversion from the traditional "center-based" perspective has opened up a new path of pro-active exploratory work for a sustainable community development programme.  This programme not only tactfully incorporates the "activity-based" and "early intervention" strategies that have always been used in integrated services for youth, in building up neworks in a new community; its application of community capital and non-problem-oriented approach, also free residents of the labeling effect while encouraging them to offer themselves to build the community together and become a "citizen of the community" rather than just a "resident".

On the day of the ceremony, the co-workers in charge of the programme urged fellow social workers in youth services to "return to the community". They also lobbied officials to implement a regular "New Estate Support Services" to breakthrough the current practice of "support only after resettlement" which has created a number of challenges for residents when adapting to a new community.