CHILDREN'S HOME AT MIRAMAR

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 57, 2 December 1918, Page 6

CHILDREN'S HOME AT MIRAMAR

' 'FORTY INMATES. One of the happiest ideas of the past week was 'the establishment of tho Children's Home in' the Miramnr Golf Club's house on the beautiful links at Miramar. Early in the trouble it became apparent that there would be children bereft of parents and otherwise neglected through those in authority being laid up, so the home was established in perhaps the best place available iu the whole of AVellington. The initial mistake was made by the authorities in bundling all the children straight out to Miramar, tho result being that some ten children' had to be brought back to town suffering from the epidemic in a light form. Then wiser heads got fo work, and arranged the clearing and observation home at the Teachers Training College at Kelburn, and from that place the children are drafted out to Miramar after being proved to be in perfectly sound health. Here again the teaching profession has come to the fore. No praise is too high for tho work the profession has done during the recent crisis. They have proved themselves to be fine organisers, and enthusiastic tireless workers, and AVellington owes a debt of gratitude to those of the profession who did come forward when help was so urgently needed. They are still at work. There were on Saturday afternoon soule forty children housed in the Miramar golfhouse, and to those whose stay" is simply a temporary one. dependent on tho return to health and strength of their parents, the happy experience is likely to be one that will live in their memories. The quarters are splendid. Each child has its own well-furnished stretcher in the big room downstairs, the dining room is the balcony upstairs, carefully canvassed ill; and the playground the green fields and sand-hills that stretch away to the ocean beach at Lyall Bay. AVhat good use, too, is being made of the time and the place. It would be impossible to,imagine any children happier than the tots who aro digging and delving in the sand the long Slimmer day through, building palaces and grounds such as the natural architecture of the child mind suggests, and having the time of their lives generally. There are regular meal hours, for which the children are always ready, and they nre all bathed and tucked in for the night at G. 30 p.m.—tired, but 'ever so pleased with their lot. Even children develop their leaders, and one has arisen in the boys' dormitory, who lords it over the rest in the best of good humour. He has been nick-named "Bill Massey." The home, like all the others; is under the supervision of the military, which is represented at Miramar by Serjeant Frank Charlton, the popular AVellington baritone. The visitors to tho home on Saturday afternoon included Mr. R. A. Wright, M.P., and Mr. Thos. Forsyth, chairman of the AVellington Education Board.