FOSTER-PARENTS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 385, 8 November 1946, Page 14

FOSTER-PARENTS

Sir,-Your article on "Foster-Parents Make Good Citizens," by A.M.R., was of deep interest to me. After reading it I looked up the last annual report of the Welfare Department and found there were fewer children boarded out, and more adopted. Probably those fosterparents who boarded a child or children, usually did it in the past to augment the family income, for young children could be kept fairly cheaply until the war years. Possibly the Department raised the boarding allowance after that period. We are all so ignorant about these dealings. The family allowance of 10/- per week may explain in part the increase in adoptions, but those childless people with compassionate hearts would adopt them, financial circumstances permitting, even without the benefit of the Family Allowance, which is now universal, Payment except in a case of necessity to my thinking takes away all right of being considered a mother; it really is only a business arrangement. (I am not referring to the Family Allowance). We know so little of the lives and conditions of those children. They have no pressure groups like the Farmers’ Union, Women’s Division, or Waterside Workers to air their grievances, to plead for their rights, or register their state of contentment. Though the article gave the impression of "It is well with the child,’ one wonders if A.M.R. or yourself, Mr. Editor, would be at ease of mind were your own children so situated. I thought the article rather like a sundial, registering only the happy hours, Some foster-parents are more moved by the desire to add a little to their income than by the spirit of compassion.

HANNAH

(Mosgiel).