Meeting
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The Commission on Poverty (CoP) Task Force on Children and Youth, chaired by Dr Philemon Choi, held its third meeting this afternoon (October 7).
The meeting followed up on the discussion of the district pilot - "My STEP", a new tailor-made programme which sought to strengthen assistance to youths who had been on CSSA for a long period and failed to be motivated by the existing employment programmes, such as Intensive Employment Assistance Projects (IEAPs).
The meeting noted that 3,750 able-bodied unemployed youths aged 15 to 24 were on CSSA last year. Among them, 2,000 were referred for the most intensive assistance currently available for them, IEAPs. A total of 704 of them remained unemployed regardless. These youth have been on CSSA for more than five years and some 30% of them have never worked – without more focused action to help them, it is difficult to foresee how they could be motivated to work and achieve self-reliance.
Dr Choi, the Chairman, said, "The Task Force is committed to working with relevant departments to vigorously tackle the most hardcore cases of youth unemployment. My STEP is only the first step towards this direction. We will look into the factors behind the hardcore cases, and make policy recommendations as to how to better tackle the problem."
The meeting agreed that as a first step, 50 CSSA youths would be selected by the Social Welfare Department from Tin Shui Wai, one of the pilot districts to take part in the pilot project. An NGO experienced in handling youth motivation/unemployment programme would be selected to follow up on the subsequent job placement of the participants, including ensuring transfer of efficacy from adventure to work, leading eventually to job placement and hopefully job retention.
In addition, members were briefed on the correlation of the social economic status (SES) of students in Hong Kong and their academic performance. They noted that such correlation in Hong Kong was not strong compared with other OECD countries. Hong Kong students generally performed well regardless of their SES. They shared the view that while material well-being was one of the factors affecting children's development, other non-monetary factors, such as nurturing social capital in our community was also important to preventing and tackling intergenerational poverty.
The meeting also discussed a concept paper on the overall policy framework, the approaches and the strategies involved in tackling intergenerational poverty. Members took note of the Government's strong commitment to ensuring a balanced and healthy development of the next generation, and reducing the risk of intergenerational poverty through providing additional support to those children and youth from disadvantaged backgrounds. Some $60 billion was spent in 2004/05 on services and programmes for children and youth, and within this, a quarter (almost $15 billion) was targeted specifically at disadvantaged children and youth. The meeting agreed that the task force would continue to examine the existing policies and measures to ensure that resources were effectively deployed to help those children and youth who needed additional support.
The meeting also noted that while material poverty was relatively easy to measure and compensate for, whether and to what extent material compensation can prevent intergenerational poverty was far less certain. The meeting agreed that material well-being was just one of the many variables affecting the development of the younger generation, and parenting quality, availability of role models and value education had a crucial impact on children and youth in developing a positive attitude and a sense of self-responsibility and self-worth. Hence, an intervention strategy should tackle both environmental and personal variables. The task force agreed to further consider policies and measures that supported development in this direction.
Towards this end, the task force noted the progress of two projects aimed to build up social capital and inculcate a positive attitude among the younger generation, namely the "Mentorship Fun Project" and the "Adopt-A-School Project".
The agenda and papers of the meeting are available at the commission's official website: www.cop.gov.hk.
Ends/Friday, October 7, 2005
Issued at HKT 19:55
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