The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been raging for over two years and the accumulated number of infected cases in Hong Kong has exceeded 1 million. During the year, one of the Society’s work foci was to support the general public to fight the virus and cope with its impact. Apart from manoeuvring our service delivery and daily operation based on past experience, we have also proactively collaborated with different organisations across sectors to better allocate and utilise our resources and to provide a diversity of professional services to assist the needy families and those in need.
In the past year, the Society not only responded to the needs of families under the pandemic, but also launched different services and projects to serve the special situations of different types of families. The Integrated Family Services have engaged organisations and charitable groups to initiate the “Social Housing Scheme” to offer accommodation solutions at a lower rent to single parent families with financial needs. The Divorce Services have kick-started the Jockey Club “Let Go and Let’s Go” Support Project for Divorce and Blended Families to provide a series of services with the focus of “traumatic intervention” and “relationships rebuild” to support divorce and step / blended families. The Foster Care Service has joined the Jockey Club “Sunny Nature”- Family Wellness Project to organise activities to enhance foster parents’ physical and emotional wellbeing, their adaptability and problem-solving skills. The Youth Services have launched the Positive M.I.N.D. Project – “Being at Ease” with a series of talks and activities to promote mental wellbeing of adolescents with four major components, namely self-care, gratitude, emotional awareness and competence enhancement. In addition, the SoulCollage® Project was run in 20 secondary schools to reinforce the positive mindset among students,parents and teachers. The Community Care and Support Services for the Elderly have taken part in the “Lifestyle Reactivation Project: Jockey Club Smart Homecare Solution” to enable elders to monitor their health condition more effectively at home. Through using home based tele-health devices to upload their health-related data to the system, their carers and caring professionals could monitor their latest health condition.
The Society has been committed to promoting family value and its functions, and advocating the importance of family wellbeing. Based on the “Hong Kong Family Wellbeing Index” which was released last year, we have carried out the study of “Understanding Carers' Family Wellbeing” during the year and organised the “Soup House Raku” to raise the general public’s awareness towards carers’ family wellbeing and express gratitude to them. The Society continues to conduct the territory-wide “Hong Kong Family Wellbeing Index” survey and other thematic studies, supplemented by activities and promotional campaigns, to uplift public concern towards family wellbeing and related issues.
With the concerted efforts and dedication of our staff, the Society has completed the work plan of Envisioning 2024 for the second year. We have achieved the expected outcome and progressed towards attaining the two strategic goals – to strengthen the application of the unique “family-centric” intervention model across services; and to engage the community to co-create, pass on and advocate the family value. We are pleased that many colleagues have grasped the “familycentric” perspective and applied it in their service delivery. We have engaged professionals of different disciplines to join our staff teams to facilitate the diversified development of the Society and, at the same time, to provide training for continuous development of our staff to extend the breadth and depth of our services. Moreover, we have regularised District Meetings and promoted cooperation among service centres for a more effective use of resources and enhanced synergies. We have also proactively connected with partners that concerned about family matters and, through our exchange and collaborations, to promote family wellbeing.
Going through many ups and downs and challenges, the society and families have adapted gradually to the “new normal”. Notwithstanding the uncertainties, our Society still believes in the functions of the family. We will continue to dedicate our efforts to support families and facilitate family members to grow and overcome different challenges together. We look forward to engaging more families and partners to promote family core values, and to enable them to treasure the family and share the common goal to fostering family wellbeing.
Ms. Amarantha Yip
Chief Executive
Hong Kong Family Welfare Society
