HOSPITAL RELIEF.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 22, 26 January 1935, Page 12

HOSPITAL RELIEF.

DEFENCE OF SYSTEM. SYMPATHETIC TREATMENT. "If the system of granting relief by the Hospital Board is to be changed, as suggested by the Mayor of 1 akapuna, when, in rather harsh terms, he denounced the system, and said that it would be much better if the giving of relief were handled by the Labour Department or by local relief committees, he is placing a big task on the Local Bodies' Association," said Mr. W. K. Howitt, chairman of the relief committee of the Hospital Board. "What are the facts? We will spend about £50,000 in the. year ending on March 31, dealing with C grade people. A and B class are not our responsibility, although these people get certain kinds of help from us which our common humanity demands. It will be interesting to know if the Labour Department, with all the money it has at its disposal— £S0 and more for every £1 we have to spend in a like direction—is dealing with the A and B class men, in so satisfactory a way that the Mayor of Takapuna is satisfied.

"How often must it be pointed out that the relief committee is not a pensions board, bnt purely a relief board? Relief granted on the North- Shore in the four boroughs for the year will approximate just on £5000, without dental treatment, dispensary treatment and medicine being counted. Then there is the upkeep of the old people at the infirmarj', who do not give a third of the fees necessary for their upkeep. From the 800 patients for the year from the North Shore, who on an average have a 20 days' stay, only a third of the fees are collected. The North Shore people easily get benefits, in common with the other parts of the board's district, amounting to roughly £12,000, while their levies amount to £7000, a debit of £5000! "The Mayor of Takapuna admits the hospital is run efficiently (he was a patient there, and should know), but if we are to give more liberally to our recipients of relief, without getting more money to do so, bow can we do it without crippling other departments of hospital work at our main institutions? We are spending at Takapuna now, in giving relief, £120 per month, without any of the other 'extras' which I do Hot wish to enumerate, because they are often of a very private and delicate nature. How easy to throw bricks at a fine social service rendered on behalf of the community with limited funds. "People often plead with lis, as a great favour, not to let local committees know their distress. The new poor do not parade their poverty, and they are treated with confidence and reticence by us. No perfect system of granting relief is in operation,- but we challenge anyone to say that everyone who is a deserving case, and who is our charge, does not get a sympathetic hearing from the Hospital Board. Change any system in the interests of the people and for their betterment, but do it by the proper methods, and not by insinuation and random talk."