ICT

The study will adapt and implement a Pakistani version of Internet-delivered Cognitive Therapy for Social Anxiety Disorder (iCT-SAD), assessing its effectiveness in reducing social anxiety symptoms among Pakistani individuals.

In the past few decades, Information and Communications Technology (ICT) have rapidly developed as effective, and probably the most cost-effective tools to connect most aspects of family lives. Alongside the growth in popularity of ICTs and its role in promoting family well-being, there is also an increasing appreciation that ICTs such as internet-enabled devices and web-based applications can offer many advantages compared to traditional face-to-face approaches when delivering behaviour change programmes. To gain more understanding of the potential new avenues of using ICT in programme implementation, The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust has initiated the Jockey Club SMART Family-Link Project in collaboration with The University of Hong Kong (HKU) and NGOs. This project aimed at helping 26 NGO-operated Integrated Family Service Centres and Integrated Service Centres (Centres), making effective use of information and communications technology (ICT) and data analytics, to enhance the quality and efficiency of their family service. Besides, it aims at building the capabilities of front-line workers so as to achieve the goal of enhancing family well-being by building an online training platform. We anticipated that the platform will benefit social workers or service-related workers in terms of knowledge transfer, experience sharing, and wisdom practice.