Interview on a Survey about the Support on Grassroot SEN Students

08 Apr 2025
Ms Vanessa CHEUNG, lecturer of the Felizberta Lo Padilla Tong School of Social Sciences, SFU, was interviewed by the now news  programme 'News Magazine' on 7 April 2025 to share the midterm results of a survey collabrating with the The Society for Community Organization (SoCO) about the Support on Grassroot SEN students.

The survey found that 61% of the parents of children with SEN interviewed were dissatisfied with the school-age support services, and 86% of the them considered that the bridging services from kindergarten to primary school were insufficient. Ms CHEUNG pointed out that Hong Kong mainly adopts a 'family-based' approach to support pre-school SEN children, and a 'school-based support' approach to support school-age SEN children. The former is more targeted and can help deal with serious or complicated cases, while the latter has many measures, but they are less targeted and less sustainable, and the emotional, behavioural and social problems of SEN children are not handled by a professional team.

In July 2024, the SoCO launched a Pilot Project of Person-centred Supports for grassroot SEN children, which provides subsidies for families of grassroots school-age SEN children to seek targeted private services. Ms CHEUNG added that each mode of support has its own efficacy. In order to support mainstream school SEN students and reduce the workload of teachers, it is recommended that service providers should implement Person-centred Support and School-based Support in parallel, and make up for each other's weaknesses.

The related media coverage is in Chinese version only
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