FRIENDLINESS BY STATUTE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 733, 31 July 1953, Page 19

FRIENDLINESS BY STATUTE

MOST of us nowadays accept the social services as an essential part of our way of life. There are probably very few who would dare to suggest that we could easily continue without them. But how much do most of us know about them? Professor D. C. Marsh, Head of the School of Social Science at Victoria University College. asks this in the first of eight talks on the social services in New Zealand which are to be heard from all YA and

YZ stations at 9.15 p.m. on Thursdays, starting on August 6. At all times in our history, says Professor Marsh, there has been a need for some members of the community to render a service to others. When the self-supporting family suffered some misfortune and had to receive help from its neighbours this would take the form of a friendly act, It is from the friendly act that our present-day elaborate social services were. born.

Professor Marsh says that as communities became more complex in organisation, and _= as population -_ grew, the simple, ‘friendly act of neighbours’ or friends was not enough. So a more systematic type of. assistance came _ into being where, for example, the wealthier members of the community gave to the poorer. Our present-day social services began when the time came to organise these charitable services on a community basis. The distinguishing feature of a social service, says Professor Marsh, is that it is rendered personally to an individual for his own

benefit or protection; the motive is altruistic; and the aim is always to benefit the recipient and not the donor. The social services then, are "those ser.vices which are provided within a community by statutory or voluntary organisations for no other purpose than that of maintaining or raising the standard of individual welfare ‘within the community." Setting out with this AiGniticn in his first talk, Professor Marsh goes on to a quick look at the way in which social services broadened their early interest in the problem of poverty to include health and education. In New Zealand, he points out, educational and health services came first, but once the principle of providing social services through the State had been accepted, the range of services widened fairly

rapidly. In discussing this development he comments on the view that the main purpose of State social services is to redistribute the national income. While giving much attention to State social services, he does not overlook the work of voluntary organisations, which he considers still play an important part. Professor Marsh will examine the development of social services in New Zealand in greater detail in his second talk. After that he will go on to discuss in turn what he describes as the constructive, the financial and the protective and reformative groups of social services. Another talk is devoted to the work of voluntary organisations, there is an examination of New Zealand’s social services "today and tomorrow," and the series ends with a comparison of social services here and abroad,