The "Tong Le Ju" under the Hong Kong Society for the Protection of Children was exposed as a suspected collective child abuse incident, in which at least 35 young children were victimized. being treated rudely.
Huang Jiachun, chairman of the Independent Review Committee, said in a TV show on Thursday (27th) that due to the lack of judgment by the management and the failure to intervene in the incident in time for fear of further loss of front-line staff, the child-care methods became increasingly rude and unacceptable. In order to prevent similar incidents from happening again, we will gradually replace the child care workers of "Tongleju" and carry out reforms.
The hospital staff who directly cause physical and psychological trauma to the child must bear the greatest responsibility, but in addition to the lack of supervision by the management, other indirect causes of the incident should also be addressed.
For example, the shortage of manpower, which has been talked about for many years, is not unrelated to this incident.
And social welfare member Di Zhiyuan also commented on the incident on the radio program. He believed that the incident was actually worse than imagined, because the problem existed at different levels, and the root cause was the one-off funding system.
Lack of supervision on the use of funds is the main cause of the incident
Since 2001, the SAR government has implemented a lump-sum grant subsidy system to non-governmental organizations (NGOs). , but the bureau has only made two reviews in the past 21 years, and has not carried out targeted reforms, resulting in no way to solve the problems raised.
Taking the "Tongleju" incident as an example, according to the 2020/21 annual financial report of the Hong Kong Society for the Protection of Children, its total income exceeded 100 million yuan, of which seven senior executives spent nearly 6.97 million in salary expenditure, accounting for nearly 100 million yuan in annual income. 7%, and even a post with a salary of more than 1.2 million yuan; and excluding staff salaries, administrative expenses and allowances, the Hong Kong Society for the Protection of Children actually spends only 1.99% on child welfare.
The Hong Kong Society for the Protection of Children responded to a newspaper inquiry earlier this month, stating that there are more than 60 employees in "Tongleju", who are responsible for taking care of more than 70 young children.
If the salaries used by the executives can be used to hire more front-line employees, I believe it will help to share the pressure of employee care and ease the incentives for employee turnover; or it can be considered to be allocated to the salaries of existing employees to encourage them to provide Better service.
A staff member of the Hong Kong Society for the Protection of Children is located at 387 Portland Street, Mongkok. On December 17, a staff member was seen allegedly abusing seven infants and young children.
(Photo by Yu Junliang)
SWD is partly responsible
There are various factors that lead to the child abuse incident at "Tongleju", and the hospital staff should undoubtedly bear the greatest responsibility, but the department is also duty-bound.
If there is only one follow-up, the problem will only happen every day. Therefore, it is necessary to make changes in the current system to prevent similar incidents from happening again.
The current one-off funding system lacks control over the use of institutional resources, resulting in them failing to make good use of funds to better allocate human resources, resulting in shortage of front-line staff and various other problems.
The SWD must make a long-term plan and focus on improving the funding system, such as increasing resource allocation plans for NGOs receiving funding to follow, to eliminate problems such as "fat and thin", and thus improve service quality.
The child abuse case of Tong Leju shocked the Social Welfare Department. Tong Leju treated children harshly.
