CHILD SUFFERS FROM AIR RAIDS

Dominion, Volume 15, Issue 70, 15 December 1921, Page 11

CHILD SUFFERS FROM AIR RAIDS

NEW ZEALAND ASSISTANCE. One of the many charities to which tho people of New Zealand contributed during the war was ft fund in aid of indigent child sufferers from air raids in Britain. In 1916-17 the sum of £1682 was forwarded for this purpose. The Minister of Internal Affairs supplies the following information.: — After immediate relief had been applied in necessitous cases there remained at the end of the war a sum of £7OO. This amount was handed over karly this year to the honorary managers of the Heritage Craft Schools, at Chailey, Sussex, which exist for the care and education of children who were victims of air raids. The accommodation available at the school was insufficient to provide for all the cases, and the managers recently took over a farm in tho vicinity. It is this farm and seven little air raid sufferers which the £<oo from New Zealand is at present supporting., The cost per child is _£loo per year, and tho funds will proviiie them with board and education for one year. The money is paid over by the High Commissioner (the Hon. Sir James Allen) in quarterly instalments. The children are under a matron, and they attend the Heritage School as day scholars. The location of the school is in one ot the most beautiful parts of Surrey, and the children have a very happy existence. Various photographs of them have l>een sent to the Internal Affairs Department, which administers the New Zealand war funds. Ona child is a cripple boy, whose leg was shattered by a. bomb. Ho is iecovering the use of his limb, and is learning a trade. Another is a girl a few years old. from the Bermondsey district of London, whose health is permanently affected. Others are: A tiny, undersized girl, -with! libart trouble brought on entirely as a result of the raids, whoso father suffered shell, shock in the war, and whose mother is still an invalid from bomb injuries; a boy dazed and ill frfim shock; a girl peralysed from raid shock, aggravated by the sudden news of her father s death in France, . , ~ „ Everything is being done to assist tho recovery of these children, and in some instances there are hopes of success. Meanwhile contributors to the fund aie assured that nt least, one year of happiness is being provided for these seven innocent little victims of the war.