A Hong Kong couple whose baby was born at home and placed in court-ordered care has said they can visit their son for up to one hour a week while they work to prove their parenting capability, as they outlined three potential outcomes listed by social welfare authorities. The unmarried couple, Tsang Wai-bong and Kwan Pui-sin, told the South China Morning Post on Sunday that they were scheduled to meet government social workers and be granted supervised visits in the coming week. During the...
A recent series of child protection controversies, including a couple refusing a DNA test to register their home-born baby, has prompted calls for Hong Kong authorities to review guidelines for identifying neglect, and to expand the list of professionals required to report suspected abuse. Under the Mandatory Reporting of Child Abuse Ordinance – which took effect in January – people across 25 designated professions, including those in the social welfare, education and medical sectors, are...
Hong Kong social welfare authorities are expected to take over the care of an undocumented baby for at least a year and may arrange foster care after his parents were arrested over suspected child neglect, a lawmaker has revealed. Legislator Reverend Peter Koon Ho-ming told the South China Morning Post that the Social Welfare Department would later consider placing two-month-old Danny in foster care until his parents were deemed fit to regain custody. Koon disclosed the plan after the department...
Hong Kong’s public housing conversation is often dominated by a single anxious question: how long do you have to wait for a home? Today, the answer is starting to change. The average waiting time for a general applicant for subsidised public rental housing has fallen to 4.7 years, a shift that feels small on paper but enormous for the families living it. The real transformation runs deeper than that headline figure. We have moved from a system that was playing catch-up to one that is steadily...
Officers who were once part of the project launched in 2008 reveal that insufficient government funding has severely affected many field activities of the scheme, including the protection of elderly people who live alone in isolated residential areas in Kozhikode district