Six service teams established under the Child Protection Support Service last March have handled 428 family cases involving parenting difficulties or child abuse risks by the end of last September, according to the Social Welfare Department.
The department has subsidised non-government organizations to set up these service teams, which provide home support, counseling, and professional intervention to help parents adopt positive parenting and repair parent-child relationships.
According ot the department’s figures, the annual number of newly registered child protection cases increased continuously from 940 in 2020 to 1,504 in 2024, with 1,022 cases recorded in the first three quarters of last year.
The Mandatory Reporting of Child Abuse Ordinance came into effect last month. Under the Ordinance, 25 categories of specified professionals, including social workers, teachers, doctors and clinical psychologists, are required to report as soon as reasonably practicable if they have reasonable grounds to suspect that a child has suffered serious harm or is at real risk of serious harm in the course of their work.
Dora Yuen Yuk Shan, Chief Social Work Officer (Domestic Violence) in the department’s Family and Child Welfare Branch, noted that the government has strengthened support in various areas in conjunction with the new law.
Measures taken include increasing manpower in Family and Child Protective Services Unit to assist in receiving and processing reported cases, as well as enhancing services for abused children and their families.
In addition, the government has continued to allocate resources to expand places for residential child care services. For instance, residential child care centers were set up in Tuen Mun and Kwun Tong, providing an additional 96 service places. These centers can offer emergency accommodation care for approximately 380 vulnerable young children each year.
