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LCQ15: Child care services
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     Following is a question by Hon Wu Chi-wai and a written reply by the Secretary for Labour and Welfare, Mr Matthew Cheung Kin-chung, in the Legislative Council today (June 17):

Question:

     It is learnt that at present, subsidised child care services for primary, kindergarten and pre-school children are all seriously inadequate, failing to meet parents' needs for the services. Taking the Kwun Tong and Wong Tai Sin districts as examples, there is no subsidised child care service in the districts, and the number of places offered by long whole-day kindergartens (LWD KGs) is also inadequate. On the other hand, quite a number of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) at present operate fee-charging child care and after-school care-cum-tutorial services (NGO-operated child care services) in the community, and some primary schools even invite NGOs to operate these services in their school premises after school. In this connection, will the Government inform this Council:

(1) whether it has plans to increase the quotas of subsidised child care services in various districts, in particular the Kwun Tong and Wong Tai Sin districts; if it does, of the details; given that the public housing under the development at Anderson Road will soon be available for intake, whether the authorities have assessed the demand for child care services in the Kwun Tong district; if they have, of the details;

(2) whether it has compiled statistics on the number of secondary/ primary schools which offer NGO-operated child care services at present; if it has, set out a breakdown of such information by individual school; whether it has plans to encourage more schools to offer NGO-operated child care services;

(3) of the number of LWD KGs, the number of places offered by them and the number of their students at present, with a breakdown by District Council district; whether the authorities have plans to encourage more school sponsoring bodies to operate LWD KGs; and

(4) given that quite a number of parents have indicated that it is difficult for them to compare the quality of subsidised and NGO-operated child care services, and it is also difficult for them to obtain information on service quotas, etc., whether the authorities will consider providing one-stop information service so as to consolidate the information on various types of child care services for parents' reference?

Reply:

President,

     In consultation with the Education Bureau (EDB), my reply to the four parts of the question is as follows:

(1) To support women in fulfilling family and work commitments, and to further respond to the community's demand for child care services, the Government plans to strengthen child care services in terms of service quality, number of places and service hours, including:

(a) from 2015-16 onwards, to provide resources for aided standalone child care centres (CCCs) and service units providing occasional child care service (OCCS) and extended hours service (EHS) to enhance supervisory and administrative support;

(b) in 2017-18, to increase about 100 places in aided standalone CCCs in Sha Tin district to provide full-day service for children aged below three; and

(c) from 2015-16 onwards, to increase in phases the number of places of EHS for children aged below six by about 5 000, from about 1 200 at present to about 6 200, at aided CCCs and kindergarten-cum-child care centres (KG-cum-CCCs) in districts with high demand.

     The Government will continue to plan for more CCCs in districts with high service demand, and invite non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to establish work-based CCCs through the Special Scheme on Privately Owned Sites for Welfare Uses, under which two NGOs have initially proposed that a total of about 100 self-financing places be provided. Meanwhile, the Social Welfare Department (SWD) plans to commission a consultancy study in 2015-16 on the long-term development of child care services.

     As regards Kwun Tong and Wong Tai Sin districts, there are 642 and 410 aided KG-cum-CCC places in these two districts respectively for children aged below three, while there are a total 25 KG-cum-CCCs and standalone CCCs in the vicinity of Anderson Road, of which 14 are aided KG-cum-CCCs. Taking into account private/ non-profit-making KG-cum-CCCs and standalone CCCs, there are still a number of available child care places in these two districts (the relevant number of places and utilisation rates are at Annex 1).

(2) EDB has provided recurrent funding to support after-school learning and support activities run by primary and secondary schools, which generally provide students with diversified activities after school till evening. Such activities are aimed at enhancing students' learning effectiveness and promoting their holistic development and personal growth. In this connection, EDB has implemented the School-based After-school Learning and Support Programmes (the Programme) to provide funding to schools and NGOs respectively for organising school-based and community-based after-school activities for needy students. In the 2014/ 15 school year, the total provision for the Programme was about $240 million, of which $113 million was allocated to 884 schools while $127 million was provided to 175 NGOs for organising 528 community-based projects. In the 2014/ 15 school year, about $38 million was allocated to 98 participating schools/ NGOs under the Ħ§After-school Care Pilot SchemeĦ¨ of the Community Care Fund, benefitting over 11 000 students. Among the participating schools, 49 organised the after-school activities in collaboration with NGOs while the remaining schools organised such activities on their own.

     In addition, the Government injected $400 million into the Partnership Fund for the Disadvantaged in 2015, of which $200 million would be dedicated to providing after-school learning and support programmes, so as to encourage more business partners to collaborate with welfare NGOs and schools in launching more after-school learning and support programmes for primary and secondary students from grassroots families. SWD has received a total of 105 applications for this dedicated purpose by the deadline of March 31, 2015.

(3) Kindergartens in Hong Kong have all along been privately run with flexibility and diversity in operation as well as adaptability and responsiveness to parents' needs, which include increasing whole-day (WD) services and the number of school places by making use of vacant classrooms or expanding the premises according to the demand.  The number of long whole-day (LWD) KG-cum-CCCs, the number of places offered by them and their student enrolment in the 2014/15 school year, with a breakdown by District Council district, are at Annex 2.

     The Committee on Free Kindergarten Education submitted a report to EDB on May 28, 2015 and made recommendations on the way forward for the development of kindergarten education, which included encouraging kindergartens to offer more WD and LWD services to meet the needs of working parents. EDB is critically examining these recommendations, and will further collect views from the sector and the general public for consideration in formulating policies and specific measures as appropriate.

(4) At present, the public may access the relevant child care service information uploaded onto the SWDĦĤs homepage via the "Child Care Service" link on the GovHK webpage. It covers the details of CCCs, KG-cum-CCCs, OCCS, EHS, Mutual Help Child Care Centres, Neighbourhood Support Child Care Project, including the names of service operators and centres with their addresses, contact phone numbers, service targets, number of places and service fees. The addresses of these two websites are as follows:

GovHK
www.gov.hk/en/residents/housing/publichousing/#/en/residents/housing/socialservices/

SWD
www.swd.gov.hk/en/index/site_pubsvc/page_family/sub_listofserv/id_childcares/

Ends/Wednesday, June 17, 2015
Issued at HKT 14:26

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