We had a very joyful Christmas Lunch Party with lucky draw! Charter President Patrick donated cash prizes on the spot so that all 21 attendees got a Christmas present to bring home!
Before the lucky draw, we welcomed two service partners from Yuk Chi Resource
Centre. They were Agency Head Miss Helen Leung and Social Worker Ms Jacqueline Lai. While our club has been partnered with Yuk Chi for three decades, for benefit of new Club
members, we invited Helen to give an introduction of Yuk Chi. Yuk Chi has been established since 1991. At the beginning, it was to provide educational seminars and
groups to parents and caregivers of disabled children, including children with autism, physically handicapped, and those with special educational needs (SEN). The Centre serves families with disabled children in the New Territories and after 30 years, the number of members has increased to over 8,500, with 2,100 SEN children. Jacqueline informed the club members that besides the routine training for parents /caregivers and educational training for the children, the Centre would mount special projects from time to time. In 2013, with assistance from our club, a multi-sensory activities room was built for
therapy training and assessment. The room was, and still is, the biggest one among the same type of activities in the New Territories.
According to rehabilitation figures published in May, 2022, the waiting time for SEN children to get pre-school rehabilitation treatment is 6 months to 2 years. In 2020-21, the in-hospital and daily outpatient received speech therapy treatment were 270,000 patient-times. The shortage of service resulted in the waiting time for a new patient to get treatment could be as long as 54 months.
In view of the imminent need for such therapy treatment and pre-school educational service, Yuk Chi has proposed to have a pilot treatment and training program for the SEN children to get such service within the golden period of childhood development. The proposal is to build a speech therapy room, and to kick-off a one year program of speech, occupational and music therapy for the SEN children. The proposed program would need HK$745,500. Yuk Chi would like to partner with our club to implement this pilot program. After the first year of running the program, which would become a regular service, Yuk Chi would seek recognition and subvention from Social Welfare Department, as well as financial assistance from other sources to make it a sustainable activity for the SEN children and their parents.
