CHARITABLE AID ADMINISTRATION.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 31 July 1901, Page 3

CHARITABLE AID ADMINISTRATION.

(OUB"OWN COBBEBPONDENT.) • '• Wellington, This Day. The past year presents no new feature in regard to charitable aid administration says Dr M’Gregor, in his annual report on the hospitals and charitable institu* tions of the Colony. The country he says, is prosperous, work of various kinds not difficult to obtain, and these facts together with the reduction effected by Old Age Pensions has reduced the amount distributed in out-door relief from £50,850 in 1899 to £42,180 for the year ending 31st March, 7901, Speaking generally, he goes on to say local boards and their secretaries are doing their best to keep down the out-door reliefs that leads to pauperism. The Wellington -‘-Benevolent trustees have shown themselves progressive. During the past two years they have restricted a too lavish outdoor relief and improved the quecity of the rations given in 1899 their expenditure On out door relief was £5,664, last year it was £3,968. The Dunedin Benevolent Society changes not its policy and is still conservative, and outdoor rations are supplied on the contract system. It is the only city where a woman visitor is not employed although experience teaches us how advantageous both to ratepayer and to relief applicants is a careful investigation of cases by the right sort of woman. The expenditure of the Society on outdoor relief in 1900 was £5,715; this Jear it is £s>Bßl, The remedy for the Isease of pauperism rests solely with the citizens, The Government has no power over relief-distribution bodies; it rests Solely with the people to Choose a wise and humane course; and women having a knowledge of social needs to act as representatives on local administrative bodies the institution to provide indoor relief to the aged and the destitute. The Caversham Home (Dunedin), and the Costley Horn e}(Auckland) are fine buildings, each containing over 200 inmates; hut he adds that both hre situated on parcels of land much too small, and at no distant date must be removed and the money spent on the building lost. The Wellington Board purpose to spend the money they have earned by careful management by extending the Ohiro Home, which stands on a barren ridge of about four acres,, and this m spite of the certainty that the whole building must shortly be abandoned. To make matters worse the land is not theirs. Dr. M'Gregor says it is a painful experience to visit the Napier Old Men’s Home. If some - kindly disposed and intelligent residents of Napier visited the infirmary ward and let the public know about the building and conditions prevailing, there would soon bo an agitation for a more suitable place for the old and infirm of the Hawkes Bay district. It is, he adds, pleasing to be able to record a distinct improvement in the Alexandra Home, Wellington, and ha ■peaks well of the Wellington Convalescent Home and the Home for the Aged and Needy. Dr. McGregor goes on to urge the necessity of a Central Receiving Home where the incurable, helpless, and bedridden men and women could be placed under the charge of hospital trained nurses,'and no longer left to the ignorant and oft times cruel tendance of a fellow inmate. 'One such institution ' on either Island would probably be suffi- : dent for the present. , TSH HOSPITAL SYSTEM. Dr MoOngor writes at some length on i our hospital system, and in doing so re- I marks tnhtair evil which seems insepar- i able from the system of local government, < is the unjustifiable interference of hospital 1 trustees in the election of. probationers 1 and the promotion of nurses. The matron t and the medical officer if they are at all t fit (or the positions, are responsible for the efficient nursing of the hospital; yet members of the board combat their recommen- - dationv and insist on] the appointment i and promotion of friends of their own, { and the consequence is very often 1 that the remove or changes of nurses i are not of the best type. Fur- i (her, only in many of our larger hospitals has it been found possible to give any systematic training to nurses, or to provide any satisfactory way of testing and : certifying thsirproficiency by examination. In many oases not only are probationers l not taught, but there is a positive tendency encouraged on the score of expense to have aa many probationers as possible who get ho pay for a period, and often no regular instruction. The result is such an output of hospital nurses that the profession is nearly swamped by them. They oall themselves private nurses, though in many cases they have no certificates and could not pass any sort of an examination, ahd they know nothing about nursing, but they add a need and very real as well |i cogtly another to Illness and death.