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In Hong Kong, professional social workers made their presence felt when they delivered a variety of services at the height of the pandemic. Social workers who were working in community development projects or who had adopted community work approaches have become the major service providers when the availability and accessibility of other types of social services have been seriously impeded. This article reports on a qualitative research study conducted to examine (1) how community social workers have planned and implemented services, (2) their use of information and communication technologies (ICTs), and (3) ideas for addressing injustices in disaster management work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Issues discussed concern the implementation of China's community service policy, focusing on the difficulties facing implementation of the policy in Beijing. Obstacles to the policy's effectiveness are addressed, and include a decentralized strategy, lack of qualified personnel, and inadequate government support.

Echoing the call to incorporate the intersectionality framework into studies of gender structure, this paper applied the framework to re-analyse the quantitative and qualitative findings of an evaluation study on a women empowerment community project in Hong Kong. This effort revealed the importance of the gender structure's dimension of sexual division of labour and the intersectional effects of gender, race and class in explaining the mixed traditional and progressive views in different items within a domain and across different domains of the gender division of labour, specifically the marital, parental, employment, social activities and education domains. The low-income migrant women have upheld different traditional ideas in these domains. However, in contrast with the richer and local women who also shared these traditional views, low-income migrant women in this study questioned some prevailing ideas in these domains, due to their need to survive the conditions defined by the intersection of gender, race and class. The findings of this study, despite being preliminary and limited, demonstrate the significance and feasibility of studying gender structure adopting the perspective of intersectionality. Arguably, this lack of understanding of the intersectional effects diminishes the effectiveness of community intervention. In light of the paucity of research adopting the intersectionality framework in the community development field in general, and a similar deficit in the feminist and community development fields in Hong Kong in particular, the failure to adopt the intersectionality framework by the community project under consideration is understandable. It is likely that as this framework becomes more prominent in the future, given its potential to offer deeper insight into the dynamics of gender structure, community interventions for women of different identities could be strengthened. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study was based on data from a survey of social capital in a low-income community in Hong Kong. Based on the importance of social capital for successful social adjustment and integration of migrants, this study compared the presence and nature of social capital among female migrants and local people and identified the relationship between socioeconomic status and the characteristics of social capital among migrant women. This large-scale survey adopted a cross-sectional design using the Chinese version of the Social Capital Questionnaire developed by Onyx and Bullen. Stratified random sampling was applied using 981 housing apartments as the sample units. A subsample of 90 new migrant women from mainland China was used for the analysis. The results indicate that the migrants had developed less social capital with different characteristics compared with that of local people. Social services to develop trust and social capital among migrants is recommended, in addition to further research on the intersectionality of gender, migrants, and social capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, the authors explored the relevance of social capital and strategies to build it for community development in a deprived community, Tin Shui Wai North (TSWN), in Hong Kong. The findings from focus-group interviews with social workers who were involved in eleven community development projects in TSWN revealed that social workers have taken social capital as a significant resource to be developed. The central focus of the projects, however, has been on bonding social capital targeting to meet the tangible needs of the community. The development of bridging social capital was limited by intensive community conflicts across racial groups, and project staff showed less awareness of the significance of linking social capital. The study also indicated that the conceptions of social capital upheld by participating social workers were mainly of a consensual approach, and the civic orientation was rather limited. Diverse strategies have been employed for building social capital in the community while serving different target groups. Social workers, however, have not been sensitive to the possible repressive dimensions of social capital, nor have thoroughly examined the concept of social capital when they applied it. The sustainability of social capital which has rarely been discussed in published studies remained the core and persistent concern. Based on the findings, the authors draw implications on developing sustaining social capital for community development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]