Babysitters are playing an indispensable role in helping Hong Kong families to take care of their children. Nannies’ contributions to the economy are well recognized as the city’s workforce continues to shrink amid a declining birth rate. Shadow Li reports from Hong Kong.

With most Chinese families up to their ears on the first day of the Lunar New Year, visiting or greeting relatives and friends at home, Tong Kwok-ying, 66, had a pleasant surprise — staring at the warm, bright and friendly smile of a boy she had taken care of since he was a month old.

Tong isn’t the baby’s granny or related to the child or his mother. On workdays, the boy’s mother would drop him at Tong’s home at 8 am and pick him up after work around 6 pm. Sometimes, Tong would invite the child’s mother to dinner when she picked him up.

This went on for six years, until the boy got into primary school and Tong’s services were no longer needed. Yet, the close bonds forged between Tong and the child’s family have lasted.  

Tong is a community babysitter in Kwai Chung in the New Territories, Hong Kong, and volunteers to look after children in the neighborhood. In 2008, she was the first batch of babysitters working under the special administrative region government’s citywide Neighbourhood Support Child Care Project, which helps families who are unable to take care of their children while they’re working for whatever reason.

READ MORE: Baby bonus to be distributed late February at the soonest

Currently, there’re 1,770 community nannies like Tong — 1,751 females and 19 males — on the list across Hong Kong. The city’s 18 nongovernmental organizations are responsible for managing them, providing 954 places for such services.

Provides flexibility

Tong is proud of her work that offers a meager subsidy of HK$25 ($3.57) an hour, but the amount has been raised to between HK$40 and HK$60 hourly since April. She enjoys taking care of children, which gives her flexibility in doing it at home along with her household chores.

Tong had previously worked as a restaurant server, a mailwoman and at a laundry shop before moving to Kwai Chung. She says none of those jobs gave her the same satisfaction as that of a community babysitter. “I only wanted to give it a try as a newcomer to the neighborhood and didn’t expect a long-term commitment.”  

At the moment, she’s looking after a three-year-old child, who has been in her care since he was three months old. “Children at this age are particularly difficult to care for and need meticulous attention as they’re fond of ‘exploring the world’ and are curious about everything,” says Tong.    

Tong’s husband, who has retired, sometimes helps out in looking after the child. The secret to her decade-long perseverance is “treating the kids like her own”, says Tong, who had three adult children of her own prior to becoming a nanny. “Also, for us, our life would be less dull with a child around as our own children have all grown up.”  

Tong is among some 400 babysitters on the list of the Women Service Association in Kwai Chung — an NGO tasked with undertaking the child-care support project. They include 50 to 80 active nannies, according to the association’s chairlady, Au Yeung Po-chun, who has been with the project for 16 years.

About 60 percent of the nannies are retirees. There’s also a young nanny in her 30s, who joined to give her own child companionship at home. The young mother says she’ll do the work until her own child grows up.

The NSCCP’s aim is to provide a home environment for children whose parents or families are unable to take care of them — a situation that some working parents in Hong Kong find themselves in, explains Au Yeung.

The concept of community support and creating a home environment for children drew Au Yeung into the project. Chronicling her memories of the 1950s, Au Yeung says she grew up in a family of six children, and the neighbors had to be called in at times to help out. Sometimes, it was merely a bowl of food for dinner when her family couldn’t make it. Thanks to community support, she and her siblings, like many other children at that time, were able to grow up.

Perhaps, it was Au Yeung’s own experience as a mother that drove her to helping those in a similar plight to which she had found herself. She recalls that in the 1990s, she had no one to take care of her 11-year-old daughter as she had to attend night classes at the University of Hong Kong three times a week. There were also days when she had to take her daughter along to school. Her daughter would sit outside the classroom for hours or would slip into the classroom if there was a vacant seat. Years later, her daughter was admitted to HKU — the city’s most prestigious institution of higher learning that ranks among the top 50 universities worldwide. Au Yeung believes she can thank those tough days for her daughter having the fortitude to make it to HKU.

Benefitting from a good neighborhood herself when she was growing up, Au Yeung wanted to give back to the community when she could. She seized the chance when the Social Welfare Department launched the NSCCP on a pilot basis in 2008. The project offers three types of services — home-based care services at the nanny’s home, care services at the child’s home, and center-based services. Each nanny can only take care of one child younger than three years old, or with special needs. They are also allowed to look after up to three children older than three years old.

About 90 percent of the cases at Au Yeung’s association opt for the home-based care service at a nanny’s home as it offers greater flexibility to working parents. Since the nanny lives nearby, parents can drop off and pick up their children without having to travel long distances and can also ask the nanny to look after the kids if they’re running late.  

According to Au Yeung, most families use the services only temporarily when there’s an urgent need. Usually, it involves a helper’s last-minute cancellation, or parents having to take short-term courses, or in some cases, when the mother is expecting a second baby.

Earlier this year, a nine-month-old baby girl was found unconscious while being looked after by a 33-year-old community nanny. The doctor, suspecting the child had been abused, called the police after finding blood clots in her brain. Doctors said surgery had had to be performed on the child in hospital to crack open her skull to relieve the pressure otherwise she might not survive. The child’s mother said she was told the damage done would be permanent and that her daughter would likely lose her sight permanently. The police later arrested the nanny on charged of ill-treatment or neglect by those in charge of child or young person.

The infant’s parents — both of whom work, they also have a four-year-old child — reached out to Yan Oi Tong, which provides community child-care services in Tuen Mun, when their domestic helper went on leave in January.

The parents celebrated the child’s first birthday at the bedside of her hospital ward. Her birthday cake had a chocolate plaque with a message wishing her the best of health. It was reported that the hospital arranged for the infant to undergo a magnetic resonance imaging test in April and another operation to fill the hole in her skull.

The Social Welfare Department told China Daily the police are still investigating the incident, and pledged support for the family, including financial assistance.

Before the incident, the SAR government had been planning to strengthen services under the project. From the fourth quarter of this year, the SWD will require a mandatory 14 hours of training devised by the department for aspirant community nannies, covering knowledge of how to deal with accidents while caring for children, infants’ physical and mental development, their special needs when growing up, and caring and communication techniques. An extra four hours of courses will be required for those taking care of children with special learning needs.

The government will also double the number of service places under the project to about 2,000, with up to 20,000 children expected to benefit, starting in the fourth quarter of this year.  

READ MORE: Baby steps

Currently, each NGO is required to offer at least 53 places for child-care services — 39 home-based and 14 center-based. NGOs will receive additional funding for extra places offered in accordance with the actual needs in their district, according to the SWD.

According to the service guidelines signed between the government and NGOs under this project, NGO social workers are required to visit the homes of in-service babysitters once a month.

Apart from efforts to provide more places for various child-care services, government subsidies for community nannies were raised in April — in a bid to attract more people to join the trade. The hourly allowance for taking care of children between three and nine years old was increased from HK$25 to HK$40. The subsidy for children with special learning needs, or those aged below three, has gone up to HK$60 per hour.

Lawmaker Frankie Ngan Man-yu, who’s a member of the Legislative Council’s panel on welfare services, welcomed the adjustments and enhancement of training for community nannies, saying this will attract more women and boost the local labor force by unleashing women’s potential.

The tragic incident involving the nine-month-old baby has dealt a blow to public confidence in the service. At a recent gathering with nannies, Au Yeung reminded them that parents should be alerted immediately if anything were to happen to the children under their care.

“Most community nannies are not in the trade for the money. They would like to help families solve the problem of taking care of their children while trying to make ends meet,” says Au Yeung. The community child-care service also offers some relief for child caretakers once in a while so they can have time to deal with personal matters, like meeting friends or for further studies.  

Below replacement level

Hong Kong saw only 32,500 newborns in 2022 — a 12 percent year-on-year drop from 2021. With 701 newborns for every 1,000 women, the city’s fertility rate is the lowest in the world — far below the replacement level of 2,100 newborns needed for the population to replenish.

Many people have blamed the SAR’s low birth rate on inadequate childcare services. But the experiences of many other regions have shown that despite multi-pronged efforts to provide support, the effect is insignificant, says Au Yeung.  

ALSO READ: LegCo approves funding for newborn cash bonus

Au Yeung’s association is shifting part of its focus on the elderly as Hong Kong’s population woes continue to deepen by extending the concept of community help for the elderly — a growing cohort among the population, especially those living alone. The nannies do home cleaning and accompany the seniors to a doctor and in shopping for groceries.

Along with Au Yeung, five members of the first batch of community nannies in her association have stayed on, including Tong, who has no plans to quit until 70 if her health allows.

But Hong Kong’s declining birth rate may soon threaten to drive community nannies out of work.

Contact the writer at stushadow@chinadailyhk.com