£30,000 In Relief

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 330, 16 April 1928, Page 8

£30,000 In Relief

HOSPITAL BOARD’S BIG YEAR

Department Aims at Prevention

WITH a lively recognition that preventive charity is a> imperative to social well-being as preventive medicine is to physical health, many hospital boards throughout New Zealand are spending large sums of money annually in keeping many people from becoming submerged beneath the recognised bread line. During last financial year the Auckland Hospital Board spent nearly £30,000 in charitable relief.

The health authorities have declared that the charity problems which New Zealand has to face are not comparable in severity to those which confront some countries where famine conditions frequently prevail. This, as a comparison, is intensely gratifying, but hospital boards are now regarding the relief expenditure for the year just closed with something like apprehension, because the economic stringency of the 1927-28 period created exeep-

tional demands upon the funds, and shattered all previous payment records. Auckland itself carried the heavy burden of approximately £B,OOO above its usual charitable payments. Normally the relief estimates are computed at a round figure of £ 20,000, but with the increase in the city’s population during the past few years, the amount has increased steadily, unt>l last year £22,000 was allotted as avi equitable figure. Before eight months of the year had passed, however, this sum had been spent, and it was perceived that the £30,000 mark would "“be approached before the end of the financial period. This anticipation has been realised, and the balance-sheet, which is now being prepared by the board’s officers, will present'to members the details of the payments. The year was phenomenal in this respect, of course, and the hope is entertained by hospital authorities throughout the country that there will be no recurrence of such a period. THE PAUPERISM HABIT

No distinction can be made, however; between the money paid out for the assistance of the unemployed and that discharged for the usual distress.

■ which is listed under the heading of I charitable relief. All moneys drawn ! from the hospital funds for relief pur- | poses must be classed in the general j endeavour to maintain social stability | among those who suffer from slack j times, and to establish a healthy, selfj reliant and independent people, j "Nothing is so catching as pauper- | ism, and the habit can become as i firm and as difficult to cure as the | drug habit.” says the Health DepartI ment In reviewing the accomplishments of the system now operating in i New Zealand. It is admitted by the authorities that education and coordination are required in the extension of charitable relief, but the claim is made, on the other hand, that New Zealand has little to learn from some j of the countries that have undertaken advanced methods of social relief. On | this and other grounds, the departI ment discounts various suggestions [ for any alteration in the present hosJ pital boards’ administration of funds.

PREVENTION IF POSSIBLE Satisfied as it is with the efficacy of the work so far as it has gone, the department suggests an elaboration of the scheme of voluntary auxiliaries, presumably along the lines of that traversed by the relief department attached to the Auckland Hospital Board, so that all charitable organisations in the district could be co-ordin-ated. In this way it hopes to prevent, rather than relieve, social stress. History proves that in the past some acts of so-called charity and some methods of State relief are so harmful to the general welfare as to become almost unmoral; but withal, it is still assumed that, until effective prevention can be accomplished, relief to meet hardship as it occurs must be the policy of the State and of the governing hospital boards. To treat a case which it has been impossible to prevent, frequently is to effect a cure, while the evolution of public attitude toward charity relief has freed from the recipients most of the stigma and inuah of the psychological reaction on personal character which it is so difficult to dissociate from charity in any form. BOARDS MUST CARRY ON Suggestions have been made recently that charitable aid administration should be divorced from the general operations of hospitals, but no sound reasons appear to have been advanced for this separation. Boards, in their administrative routine, afford charitable relief to those who are unable to pay for treatment in tbe hospitals, while the same machinery for inquiries is used iu these cases as in inquiries on behalf of actual relief applicants.

A proposal that the State should administer charitable relief does not commend itself to the authorities because of the burden it would impose on the Consolidated Fund —that community treasury which already has contributed its share in subsidies and grants. The message of the State to the boards is one of congratulation and applause—a wave of the hand and the encouraging advice to ‘‘carry on'.’’