ORPHANAGE WITHOUT ORPHANS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 485, 8 October 1948, Page 5

ORPHANAGE WITHOUT ORPHANS

Sir,-Mutual back-slapping in no way modifies the conclusion of the Curtis report, ably interpreted by D.M.M., that

large institutions are no substitute for a good home. It is significant that the Child Welfare branch under John Beck and his successors should have given a a lead in recognising this, The State boards out. non-delinquent children whenever fester-homes can be found for them, and the majority of its delinquent charges. And this despite such excellent institutions as that Levin, which I should recommend your complacent correspondents to visit before they praise their own facilities for recreation and handicrafts. Private institutions, being predominantly religiotis, are concerned with supervising the upbringing of their charges. "Boarding-out" is as rare with them as it is common with the State. Talk of "cottage homes" sounds well. But with shortage of funds, shortage of building materials, shortage of trained staff, shortage of married couples willing to accept the pittance usually offered, the number of cottage homes with a foster-father and mother is negligible, The few that there are merely serve to emphasise the shortcomings of the large institution,

There is a point I wish to make in this correspondence. It is that the child in an institution has no "rights’---he is at the mercy of authority which may be benign or may not, in a sense that other children are not. The occasional visit of a Child Welfare officer does not serve to protect him, It should be impossible for a lad in an institution to be so severely beaten that he has to be-removed to hospital; it should be impossible to force girls to toil long hours at the wash-tub with only the hope of Heaven to sustain them; to imprison institution children for weeks at a time within their own grounds, because no adult has the time to take them out, These things are happening in our children’s institutions: Until we, as the public, inters$t ourselves in conditions in these institutions and in the children themselves, they will continue to happen. A few excellent institutions in no way prevent witless cruelty from characterising the worst. I trust that D.M.M. will be granted space to describe a scheme which has been fruitful in Britain-the "uncles and aunts" scheme whereby the child is at least afforded an opportunity of confiding in someone not officially connected with the institution in which he is-yes. ~-imprisoned,

A. R.

MALCOLM

(Dunedin),