We are on a five-month professional leave to teach in the School of Social Work at Zongshan University, Guangzhou, Guandong Province, PRC. Since arriving on the 16th, we have met with students and faculty and have visited a number of social service agencies here in Guangzhou. The past two days we have been accompanied by a group of Hong Kong social workers, people who have had close and ongoing ties to the efforts at establishing non-governmental organizations (NGO) here on the mainland. Today, we first visited a program that serves as an outreach and center based program for those with mental illnesses. Everything we saw was largely consistent with the North American approach to these problems, although their resources were considerably fewer. The days of consumer empowerment have only begun and when I shared the experience
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