WELFARE OFFICE TO BE SET UP

Taupo Times, Volume 23, Issue 56, 16 July 1974, Page 1

WELFARE OFFICE TO BE SET UP

By

Pat Liddell

v A full-time social welfare office is to be established in Taupo. Details on the move wiil be announced in two to three weeks by the Minister of Social Welfare, Mr King. The move follows, in part, a disclosure by the Taupo Times last Thursday that a 14-year-old boy was caring for 18 children.

The Member for Taupo, Mr J. W. Ridley, said yesterday he raised the , matter of a full-time office with the Minister six months ago. fc "Mr King on Friday " accepted there was real urgency in this matter after he had been made aware of the Taupo Times' story," said Mr Ridley. "This story indicates there is a real problem in Taupo." Yesterday Government , welfare agencies remained tight-lipped on the boy's case. Both the Social Welfare Department and the Department of Maori and i

Island Affairs in Rotorua have adopted a "no comment" attitude — until department officials have read the original article on the family's condition. The director of social welfare in Rotorua, Mr M. G. Miller, said he had not been contacted for a comment before the article was published. Yet, before the article appeared, Mr Miller had telephoned the editor of the Times saying he had heard "rumours of the story." Mr Miller was told of the boy's plight — and then said he was not prepared to comment until he had been made aware of the fact.

He said yesterday he had not read the article, but it appeared to him that some of the facts contained in it were wrong. "When the police checked the home last week, no one was there," he said. Police were called to the house in Rifle Range Road because school authorities believed the boy was playing truant. The house had been abandoned by the family some time before that. "When social workers checked the family only nine children were involved," said Mr Miller. There are nine children in the boy's family — but

when his mother and two relatives apparently left to attend the funeral the boy had to care for his cousins as well. Mr H. E. Tapsell, a social worker with the department in Rotorua, told a Sunday newspaper at the weekend that the family was to be broken up this week. He refused to confirm his statement when I telephoned him yesterday. "My instructions are that the matter is under investigation and it is not appropriate that I say anything at the - moment," he said. Asked why he had made a statement to a Sunday newspaper reporter, he said he had been approached by the journalist, but had not been asked for a comment before the original article appeared last week. In his statement to the newspaper, Mr Tapsell said the children' s mother had returned and had taken them to a tangi at a marae several miles from Taupo. He said it would have been "inappropriate" to take action during the week because the children were at the marae. Mr Tom Wall, secretary/ treasurer of the Waitahanui Maori Committee, said on Friday that the boy's mother had not been seen on the marae during the tangi. He was concerned that the article — where it referred to drinking — was a "bad reflection" on the marae. Mr Wall made it clear

Welf are office to be set up

that alcohol is not consumed on the marae. The funeral was held on Wednesday — the day the boy gave evidence into a tape-recorder of the family' s plight to his teachers and myself. Mr Tapsell said he did not know who the family was but the house had been visited by social workers on a number of oeeasions. The district officer of the Maori and Island Affairs Department in Rotorua, Mr J. E. Cater, was equally evasive when asked if the department made checks of Maori Affairs' houses. He said there was no such thing as a Maori Affairs' house — although social workers in Taupo referred to the house in Rifle Range Road as such. "As far as I know there are no Maori Affairs' houses in Taupo," said Mr Cater. And while one Government welfare agency is making apparently contra-

dictory statements and the other is remaining silent, it is understood that social workers in Taupo are working hard to sort out the family's problems.