Shaik (an alias) was a Pakistani who had been living in Hong Kong for almost 5 years. Like other Pakistani women, she immigrated to Hong Kong because her husband worked here. As Shaik lived in the countryside in Pakistan,  she found to have a cultural shock here…..the busy living style, the convenient transportation network, good provision of the social welfare services, etcs…. ‘Pakistani women feel very proud of having a chance to live in another country.’ Shaik said. Her sister also lived in Hong Kong and they always supported each other. Apart from them, Shaik did not have any other support network here. Having little knowledge about the community resources that South Asian families could make use of together with the cultural and language barriers, she found it hard to build up relationship with the local people.

Shaik gave birth to a daughter three years ago. During her pregnancy, her family had encountered a lot of difficulties. Language barrier was one of them. During her maternal check-up, she could not communicate well with the para-medical staff and sometimes it needed to be assisted with the body language. She felt frustrated because she did not understand the English and Chinese language. Besides, the courses on child care were conducted in local languages and the training leaflets were available either in Chinese or English. These made her difficult to have access to the child care knowledge. Stringent family finance was another problem. As her husband could only speak Cantonese, therefore, he could only take up the manual job earning a rather low income. As the family was going to have a new member, it is foreseeable that the family would experience greater financial pressure.

Shaik’s daughter was born prematurely. The baby girl has been hospitalized for 4 months since birth. Being a new mother, she was not aware of the potential developmental problem of a premature baby. When her daughter was almost 2 years old, she was assessed to have developmental delay. ‘My husband found that the daughter is walking on her toes while other children of same age could walk steadily. I didn’t realize any problem because I thought my daughter was still very young.’ Shaik said. The speech development of her daughter also lagged behind the children of same age. Her daughter cannot speak simple word when she had reached two years old.  As she had no idea on how she could help the daughter, she felt stressful.  When her daughter had a chance to receive training from early education and training centre of Heep Hong Society, she found that her daughter had significant progress in all areas such as walking steadily, better language skills. At the same time, she was able to grasp more knowledge on the developmental needs of the children while in the past, she took it for granted that every child could learn the things naturally. At present, she became aware that the parents have to play a significant role in the enhancement of the child development. She hoped that her daughter could have steady progress in future.