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The Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food, Dr York Chow, today (June 23) attended the annual consultation session with the welfare sector to listen to the views of more than 200 sector representatives for considering the priorities in 2007-08 and beyond. The consultation session was conducive to maintaining close communication and ties with the welfare sector.
Having regard to the new and enhanced services launched in 2006-07, discussion was mainly centred on: what are the areas for refinement in consolidating the welfare services; what are the enhancements or streamlining of existing services that may be considered within the resources available; and service gaps that may needed to be filled.
Dr Chow said though the discussion concentrated on the priorities in the following year, the meeting also touched on the views of the welfare sector on the longer term development because welfare services or programmes require a long time to deliberate and discuss.
"The mechanism can be regarded as an annual rollover exercise to plan for the coming years," he said.
The annual consultation had provided another channel for the welfare sector to exchange views with the Government. Taking into account the sector's views, the Government could set the priorities to tie in with its policy and resource planning cycle. The views gathered could be reflected in the Policy Address where appropriate, he added.
"How to consolidate new and existing resources and services is the most important task for the welfare sector in the coming year," he said.
He pointed out that since the introduction of the lump-sum grant subvention mode, the Government had received quite a number of views. Some said this subvention mode provided greater flexibility for non-governmental organisations to meet the changing service and community needs, and hence no change should be made.
The use of competitive bidding in welfare sector could enable the organisations to bring more innovation and more effective deployment of resources. Such a practice should be continued. He encouraged cross-organisation and cross-sector collaboration in service delivery.
Since assuming the post of the Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food, Dr Chow has introduced an annual consultation mechanism for the welfare sector as from 2005 as an annual planning process to determine the priorities in the following financial year and beyond.
There have been many channels to gauge views of the sector on the provision of services in different areas, including the Social Welfare Advisory Committee, Elderly Commission, Women's Commission, Community Investment and Inclusion Fund Committee, and the advisory structure under the Social Welfare Department. The new mechanism served a complementary role. In addition, the Legislative Council has focused discussion on specific welfare issues from time to time and their views were taken into account in the course of discussion.
Given the favourable response, the Government continued with the mechanism this year. The first session of this year was held today while the second one would be held after the Policy Address in November 2006 to debrief the sector of the new initiatives announced in the Policy Address.
Ends/Friday, June 23, 2006
Issued at HKT 20:40
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