Four seminars, announced by the city’s education department, will include educational psychologists and other experts, and will be held for teachers and principals from next week.
Secretary for Education, Kevin Yeung Yun-hung, said the Department hoped the seminars will help kindergarten and primary schoolteachers understand how and why abuse incidents happen, and how early intervention can prevent them from happening again.
“We noticed that various sectors in society have become more aware of such incidents, as more reports of suspected cases have surfaced recently, Yeung said.
“However, we believe that one of the key points to work on in future is how to make teachers and the community more alert about such issues.”
The announcement follows the shocking revelations of a five-year-old girl dying from alleged child abuse last week.
Between January and September last year, 704 cases – an average of 78 a month – were flagged to authorities, more than the monthly average of between 71 and 74 in the three preceding years.
Latest available full-year figures show 892 cases were reported to the Child Protection Registry in 2016, compared with 874 in 2015 and 856 in 2014.
In more than half of these cases, the abusers were parents, but other common perpetrators included friends of the family and unrelated people.
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