N.Z. “Deluded” Over Security Benefits

Press, Volume C, Issue 29499, 28 April 1961, Page 20

N.Z. “Deluded” Over Security Benefits

New Zealanders as a nation had deluded themselves into thinking that the payment of various kinds of beneAts under their Social Security programme was all that was needed. They were only just beginning to wake up to the fact that abolition of actual destitution merely brought into greater prominence the no less real hardships from which beneficiaries of all groups suffered. and none more than the old. This was said by Dr. J. L. Newinan, medical superintendent of Green Lane Hospital. Auckland, in an address on geriatrics to the British Medical Association conference at Auckland in February. A report on his address has been published in the British Medical Journal. Dr. Newman had no doubt that old age was the most important single cause of poverty and hardship in New Zealand. The personal charge which many doctors made in addition to the Social Security payment was a hardship to many old-age beneficiaries. It was a pity that there was no allowance for specialist consultations. The coverage of district nursing services in New Zealand was “nothing like as good” as in England. They varied greatly from place to place according to the imagination of the local hospital board and the accessibility of the patient. Accommodation Accommodation for the elderly was a grevious problem. but the State Advances

Corporation provided practically no home* for them. The local authorities, who were given a 50 per cent. State subsidy for old people's homes, were very tardv in recognising the need. and development under the stimulus of the national old folks* welfare conference held at Wellington in 1955 was only fust beginning. It was the yoluntary, and above all the religious, bodies, who had shown most alacrity in pressing on with provision for the elderly. The old in New Zealand were more fortunate than old people in other countries in one respect. The over-85's constituted 8 per cent, of the population. and according to population projections this proportion was scarcely going to vary at all. so that there were not the grave socio-economic problems beginning to cause concern elsewhere.