Staff Sharing

Comprehensive residential care services bring colors to children’s life. “Why do the children need to be suffered at such a young age? Every child deserves proper care.”  Po Leung Kuk offers a variety of residential care services to children with family difficulties. One of them is the “New Comers’ Ward” at the Headquarters, which is the only gazetted place of refuge in Hong Kong providing urgent and short-term residential care for children who are under family crisis. It is common that children would feel nervous and anxious when they entered the new environment. The support and companionship of our frontline caregivers are therefore important to create the warmest shelter for the children.  Sum Miu is one of the welfare workers who has been working in the Ward for 3 years already. She has looked after more than 300 children with inadequate family care due to sudden family crises, divorce /decease /imprisonment / hospitalisation of parents, or child abuse. “Sometimes police rang the doorbell at 2 or 3am and brought the kids around. The top priority at that time is to prepare sufficient food and bed to meet the children’s physical needs.”  Emotional support is another crucial duty of the staff. Sum Miu pointed that the Ward has set up the “Golden 2 Hours” system. Each new-coming child will receive exclusive child care by a specific staff as their ‘Buddy’, who will answer their concern for living in the Ward so as to soothe their anxiety.   Emotional and behavioral problems are often found in the Ward’s children with complicated family background. It requires substantial effort to open up their hearts and educate them. “Patience is the key. For instance, if they were in temper, we will teach them to clench their fists, stand aside and try to calm down. Afterwards we will explain the reason to them and solve the problems step-by-step. I hope the children can leave with the knowledge learnt from the Kuk and develop the proper attitude to get along with people.”

  25 is simply the golden age of everything, some people work hard for their career, while some people are getting prepared to form their own families. But for the 25-year-old Cheung Ka Fai, he is already the “dad” of 14 boys. This Cheung Ka Fai is not the renowned actor we see on screen. He, dubbed as “Cheung Sir”, holds a Master of Social Work and is the “parent” of the Po Leung Kuk’s dormitory in Children Section, responsible for taking care of 14 “sons” regularly.      Cheung Sir needs to take care of 14 boys aged between 6 and 18 living in one of the Kuk’s dormitory. Every day, Cheung Sir the “dad” needs to wake up his sons for school, ask them to brush up and get dressed, make them breakfasts, tidy up, pick them up after school and teach them homework. But his role is not only limited to “dad”, when he got along with children in secondary schools, he treats himself like their “brother”, who can chit chat and joke around with them, or confide in each other, and built up their relationship in a comparatively casual way. Cheung Sir is also like a “tutor” in after-school care class, guiding them to study and finish their homework in the self-study periods. During weekends, he then turned himself into “fitness coach” to train up their physique and supervise them to do more exercise.    Being the parent of the dormitories need to work long hours, but the wish of spending more time with the new generations has triggered Cheung Sir to move from a student discipline teacher in secondary school to the big family of Po Leung Kuk. Children living in the dormitories cannot receive adequate cared for by their families due to various family problems, and often lack father’s care during their growth. Therefore, Cheung Sir hopes to give them care and love by the identity as a “dad”. He also mentioned that each child has a unique background underlying different family issues, it is necessary to adopt different tailor-made approaches to get along with each child, so as to establish relationships with them, gain their trust and give them a sense of security; but at the same time need to ensure everyone is being treated equally, in order to let them realise the common standard in dealing with serious problems.   Helping the children to understand themselves, explore their dreams, discover their ways of life, and among all to learn to be a good boy, are all the meanings for him to be a “dad”.