Highlights of the Year 2021-22

Increasing Rehabilitation Service Places
To meet the demand for services, SWD provided 656 additional rehabilitation service places in 2021-22, including 390 places for pre-school rehabilitation services and 266 places for residential rehabilitation services.

On-site Pre-School Rehabilitation Services
SWD further increased the number of service places under On-site Pre-school Rehabilitation Services (OPRS) to over 9 000 in the 2021/22 school year. As at September 2021, there were 21 NGOs providing rehabilitation training for children with special needs studying in about 890 kindergartens (KGs)/kindergarten-cum-child care centres (KG-cum-CCCs). The Government will further increase the number of service places by 1 000 in the 2022/23 school year to bring the total number of places to 10 000.

Pilot Project on Tier 1 Support Services in Kindergartens/ Kindergartens-Cum-Child Care Centres
SWD launched the Pilot Project on Tier-1 Support Services in Kindergartens/ Kindergarten-cum-Child Care Centres (the Pilot Project) in the 2020/21 school year through Project Teams operated by 6 NGOs to provide early intervention services for children awaiting assessment by Child Assessment Centres (CACs), or assessed by CACs to have borderline developmental problems in about 80 KGs/KG-cum-CCCs participating in OPRS. Moreover, SWD explored the feasibility of integrating the Pilot Project with OPRS to provide more comprehensive, flexible and ongoing support to cater for the training needs of pre-school children with different levels of special needs.

Enhancing Community Support Services for Persons with Disabilities and Their Carers
To assist the rehabilitation of PWDs and their integration into society on a continuous basis, SWD has enhanced the provision of centre-based and home-based services for them and their carers. Regarding centre-based services, SWD has increased the number of Parents/Relatives Resource Centres from 6 to 19 and that of Support Centres for Persons with Autism from 3 to 5 since 2019-20, with manpower strengthened accordingly. Moreover, the manpower of District Support Centres for Persons with Disabilities has also been strengthened in the same year, and the number of centres will be increased to 21 from 2022-23. Besides, starting from 2019-20, SWD will provide an additional 1 800 service places for “Home Care Service for Persons with Severe Disabilities” and “Integrated Support Service for Persons with Severe Physical Disabilities”, and enhance the escort and speech therapy services by redeploying and allocating additional resources. Currently, there are a total of 4 450 home-based service places for PWDs residing in the community.