It may look like a cross between a prison camp and an amusement park - but for more than 40 years the Chuk Yuen Children's Reception Centre has been offering help to the most vulnerable members of society.
However, the Health, Welfare and Food Bureau yesterday announced that the centre in Wong Tai Sin, a refuge for abused and in-danger children aged eight and under, will close because it is no longer cost-effective.
'As the occupancy rates have been less than satisfactory, the department considered that its services should be hived off to the non-governmental sector after a critical review of the cost-effectiveness of the centre,' a spokesman for the bureau said.
The Po Leung Kuk charity will take over Chuk Yuen's role.
Over the years the four-storey yellow building has been home to thousands of children, usually 50 or so at a time.
Behind the centre's high barbed-wire fence, decorated with paintings of cartoon and storybook characters, lived children needing a chance at a better life - some abandoned, some needing to be kept away from suicidal or drug-addicted parents. What the children were offered was a gateway to a better life.
Its most famous resident was probably five-year-old Kwok Ah-nui, in 1986.
