Making children safe online

For today's youth the Internet offers opportunities beyond any of our expectations. In a decade, it has revolutionised the classroom and is a major interface between children and technology. But with it have come challenges, risks and dangers. They include pornography, harassment and the online soliciting of children. This is a very serious concern, especially when the majority of our secondary students have received obscene material online.

Risk management techniques at home, at school, via the media, government and the law have to tackle the problem. With parents' and children's awareness raised, projects such as the Federation's forthcoming exchange camp and international conference on the subject can be effective. With Hong Kong's Internet service providers regulating website content and being backed up by law enforcement, the healthy cyber world of the future can become a reality. Any child going online should be able to do so safely. That is our goal and we can reach it through a concerned, concerted effort.

From night drifter to volunteer student

Since 2002 the number of youngsters who regularly spend the night out on Hong Kong's streets has stayed over 10,000 despite work by members of outreach groups. Night drifters hang out in parks, cafes and playgrounds, sometimes going to community hostels. Use of the hostels has doubled since 2001 but the draw of night-time entertainment keeps number rising slowly. What are the other factors? One is unemployment. Another is peer pressure. A third is disharmony at home – and this is where the problem almost always starts.

Fion used to be a night drifter but she got on top of her problems and is now doing an associate degree. On the way she had a lot of help from Joey, a professional social worker who is with the Federation's Youth Support Scheme (YSS). Joey persuaded her to help out in various volunteer projects and now she is passionately interested in helping others. But she started getting into trouble at the tender age of 12.

"...all I wanted to do was play around…there was nothing
for me at school and not much at home either…" Fion

All manner of bad influences came Fion's way. In those days she was very impressionable and with her best friend Christy joined in several nefarious activities, never expecting to be caught. When the police did pick them up they handed the F2 students over to us for counselling. Joey gradually won Fion & Christy's trust and it turned into a very positive relationship. Meantime there was break-up between Fion's parents who were already on the way to divorce. Joey helped Fion to cope with that too.

I watched while Fion's attitude to her family changed,
she saw her parents in trouble and realized her role in holding things together. Joey

Throughout their teens Fion and Christy were involved in Federation programmes, not only volunteering, but doing fitness training and a course on beauty and makeup. But Fion kept going back to VNET (the Youth Volunteer Network), helping with the Odyssey of the Mind Programme, working with elderly people and eventually visiting breast cancer patients during the Rainbow for Life project.

Naturally all these experiences gave them a boost - not just in self confidence but in their sense of self worth - a very important change for youth at risk. Both say how meaningful they found helping others, especially young people, and particularly when those youngsters follow their example and become volunteers themselves. Even the principal of their old school at Tsing Yi was convinced and community work has become a recognized extra-curricular activity.

As time went by, Fion, once bottom of the class, started to take school more seriously. She wanted to become a social worker by now and realized that meant passing exams. Joey, her counsellor and role model saw her potential and nominated her for an outstanding volunteer VNET award when she was 16. In the same year she took part in YSS-organized group sharing sessions at Tsuen Wan and Kwai Tsing primary schools, describing to Primary 5 and 6 children what it was like to have been a vulnerable young teen but to have triumphed over her own shortcomings. This achievement earned her another award.

" I have learned how to care for others", says Fion. "Now it's time to share that experience".

By Form 7 she had gained enough points in the public examinations to be accepted at the City University of Hong Kong. Fion hopes eventually to do a degree in social work. Meantime she keeps up her volunteer work and will be standing by at the ceremony this weekend, proudly watching while her old friend Christy - once her partner in petty crime - follows in her own footsteps, climbing up on stage for her own outstanding volunteer award.

In February this year a jilted, emotionally disturbed Sham Shui Po woman attempted to kill her two children and herself. Then came the much-discussed triple murder-suicide in Tin Shui Wai. Three weeks ago a divorced, unemployed man threw himself and his son off the balcony. Is the problem of family violence worse in Hong Kong than elsewhere? No, but it is increasing (see table) and our crowded city amplifies the situation. Zero tolerance to domestic violence is the official policy and guidelines to help social workers evaluate the risks in family disputes have either been recently revised or are currently under review. Meanwhile the police are setting up a central database of family violence cases and parent mentors have also been proposed.

When young people are involved we are always ready to step in. Federation counsellors work with youth at risk and over-stressed, anxious parents. Where there are shortcomings in existing social services we always hope we might be able to fill the breach. But, as with back-up to any official service, we need to offer both adequate resources and careful cooperation.

Statistics on family violence 2002-2004

Young people are exposed to gambling advertisements from their formative years so perhaps a gradual increase has been inevitable. Findings of a Hong Kong Young Women's Christian Association telephone poll, conducted between March and August this year among 4,110 interviewees confirm this trend, showing a slight increase of 1.45% in the number of problem gamblers compared to a similar survey done in 2000. However, the more alarming finding was that 12% of youngsters in the group, aged 12 to 18, met internationally recognised criteria for pathological gamblers. This matches findings in the US where 10-17% of teenagers are considered problem gamblers and that represents 2-3 times the adult rate. More counselling services and educational programmes are needed for these young punters since some of them go down the wrong track due to lack of proper guidance. In the meantime, to prevent things going from bad to worse, Doris Wu, a clinical psychologist with the Association, suggested that parents and siblings should make a solid stand against family members' demands for money to gamble with while being aware of the compulsive nature of their habit.