CHILD WELFARE

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22414, 30 May 1938, Page 8

CHILD WELFARE

Value of Family Life LEAGUE COMMITTEE’S RESEARCH (noil OCB OW« COBBESPOnDEKT.) LONDON. May 7. The vital importance of home and family life on a child’s upbringing was one of the points emphasised at the meeting of the League of Nations Advisory Committee on* Social Questions which was held recently. The committee reaffirmed the famous “Children’s Charter,’’ v/hich was adopted by the Assembly of the League in 1924. This charter was a declaration of the rights of the child, and has special bearing on tragic events of our own day. It declares, for example, that in times of emergency and of disturbance or of war. the child should be the first concern of the authorities. The child represents the most precious heritage of mankind and should be the first object of care in any emergency. During the recent session further investigations into child made. It had been found that, in many countries, experiments were being made in placing children, not in institutions, but in private homes. In the first instance, this placing of children in families has applied, not to delinquent children, but to orphans, abandoned children or children whose parents had been plainly shown to be unworthy of parental authority. Experts on child-care in general agreed that the best possible thing that can be done for any child is to give him a home. He should, in the first instance, be left in his own home if the only difficulties there are material ones. Poverty itself, they declared, should never be considered sufficient reason for taking a child out of his home; in that case, the parents should be assisted by the social authorities to keep the family group together. Nor should* illegitimate children be taken away from their mothers, except for the gravest of moral reasons. Social workers have usually found that it is happier for the child tb have one parent than to be an orphan, and it is often the best possible thing for the mother to be allowed to keep him. But in cases where a child has no natural home, the design of the authorities responsible for the placing of children is to find him a second home to replace what he has lost. With this purpose in view, the committee recommends that the home in which a child is placed should resemble the one he has lost In so far as possible, with particular reference to race, language, and religious instruction.

Illustrating unusual soil fertility and the semi-tropical nature of the climate at Helensville, bananas of the finest quality have been grown in the grounds of the Parakai Hot Springs Hotel, The bananas were stated to be equal in taste to the finest of imported lines, and guests at the hotel recently had the novel experience of .tasting excellent fruit that was raised within a stone’s throw of their tables’. The increase in rates was necessary to meet additional costs arising out of legislation affecting hours of work and rates of pay for the council’s workmen and the rates of pay and additional costs on contract works, said Cr. A. S. McNaught, retiring chairman of the Southland County Council, when explaining why the general rates levied for last year had been increased by more than £4OOO. The amount levied was £44,509. t«mnan>H with £39.959 the previous year.