$50m to improve parenting skills

People who work unsociable hours are to be targeted in a $50 million programme to improve parenting skills.

Over the next three years social workers hope to contact 300,000 parents who have jobs such as taxi-driving, sales and in restaurants.

The money was earmarked by Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa in his Policy Address last October.

'It's always most difficult to reach out to parents who work long hours and have no interest in talking about their kids,' Director for Education Matthew Cheung Kin-chung said.

'Some single parents are also less willing to open up. Instead of having them coming to us, we will go to them.

'And we will mobilise active single parents to talk to the less active ones because they share something in common.'