CARE OF POOR AND AGED

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21147, 24 April 1934, Page 10

CARE OF POOR AND AGED

Hospital Board's

Functions

RELIEF ASSOCIATION'S PROTEST

A protest that persons who should really be a charge on the Hospital Board had to be assisted by the l Metropolitan Relief Association was made by Mr F. W. J. Belton at the meeting of the association yesterday. He maintained that before there was any organisation for unemployment relief—or any need for it—aged and indigent persons were normally cared for by the board, but now many such persons had to be helped by the association. It was decided to ask for a meeting between members of the board and the executive of the association. Comment at the meeting was made in amplification of the following statement in the report of the sub-committee investigating winter relief: "It is the practice of the Metropolitan Relief Depot not to supply Hospital Board cases, and these cases are referred direct to the Hospital Board, and only if no relief is obtained there is the case further considered by the Metropolitan Relief Depot." Mr Belton said that last year it had been clearly announced that the association's work was to assist registered unemployed men whose relief pay was insufficient to maintain them, and not to assist those who were properly a charge on the Hospital Board. Those who were classed B2 men, and those aged and indigent persons who were a charge on the Hospital Board in former times—before it was necessary for such a body as the association to provide relief—should continue to be a charge on the board.

Demand on Association Time and again during the last year the association had had to assist persons who were properly a charge on the Hospital Board, and who needed a further ration on top of the very meagre ration given them by the board, he said. The board received its income from rates over a very wide area, and it was subsidised by the Government. In the circumstances it was unfair to the association and to the public generally that the association should be called on to help people who really were the care of the Hospital Board. "We should bring pressure to bear on the Hospital Board to see that the relief it is called on to do is properly done," said Mr Belton. Mr W. W. Scartf said that he had brought this matter to the attention oft the board several times. "We must get the Hospital Board on its knees, or its feet, whichever is suitable," he said. "If it got about the country that the board was not doing its duty in this respect quite a number of large ratepayers would ask what they were paying their rates for." Members mentioned the good work done by the Hospital Board in providing medical attention and medicine for cases sent to it by relief organisations. On the motion of Mr Scarff it was decided to ask representatives of the Hospital Board to meet the executive of the association.