POLICE WORK WITH YOUTH-AT-RISK: WHAT CAN SOCIAL WORK CONTRIBUTE?

While traditional policing focuses on crime control by law enforcement, the Hong Kong Police Force has increasingly affirmed the importance of multi-agency collaboration and service-orientation in their work. The change provides impetus for venturing on more innovative training for police. The Police Attachment to NGOs Program is an unprecedented tailor-made multi-agency training program for serving police officers in Hong Kong. A series of these training programs were commissioned to the Department of Applied Social Sciences of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. So far, seven rounds of training have been completed. The program consisted of three phases — the pre-attachment induction phase, the attachment phase and the post-attachment deepening phase. The trainees were provided with opportunities to dialog with the social workers and youth-at-risk directly, an experience evaluated by the trainees as stimulating and rewarding. The program also generated benefits to the social workers and the service use...