The Social Welfare Department today announced the establishment of the Committee on Review of Residential Child Care & Related Services.

The committee was set up to conduct a comprehensive review on residential child care services and the monitoring of related services, and propose enhancement measures.

The department explained that in response to a suspected child abuse incident in a children's residential home earlier, which aroused wide public concern, the Government immediately took a series of follow-up actions to ensure the operation of residential homes is in compliance with the service quality requirements and proper care is provided for children receiving the services.

To strengthen monitoring and enhance service quality, the department has accorded priority to conducting a review on residential child care and related services following the recommendations made in the Review Report on Enhancement of Lump Sum Grant Subvention System on the quality enhancement of subvented services.

The new committee is led by the Director of Social Welfare, which comprises members including Legislative Council members, experts in children's affairs, representatives of welfare organisations with relevant experience as well as experts from the medical, legal and business sectors.

It will review the existing residential child care and related services, the interface among services and service monitoring; identify areas for improvements and work out feasible enhancement measures; and put forward concrete proposals on areas under review.

The review will begin this month and is expected to be completed by March next year.

The committee will then report the outcome of the review to the Commission on Children and LegCo's Panel on Welfare Services.