REHABILITATION PLANS

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23811, 3 December 1942, Page 4

REHABILITATION PLANS

Vocational Guidance Centres

CHRISTCHURCH SITE CHOSEN

(From Our Parliamentary Reporter) WELLINGTON, December 2. A preliminary survey has been made of a suitable site in Christchurch on which will be erected a building for use as a vocational guidance centre for returned disabled servicemen from the present war. In an interview with “The Press” to-day, Mr M. Moohan, chairman of the Rehabilitation Bpard, said it was hoped that the proposition for the establishment of the centre would be placed before the board soon. Mr Moohan said that plans were being prepared already by an architect in Dunedin for submission to the board for the building in Dunedin of a centre on land generously given by the Otago Harbour Board.

The Christchurch centre will probably be established on land in Durham street.

The centres will be used for occupational training of disabled men—men who have lost limbs normally employed in their pre-war occupations and those who are unfitted .to return to the occupations in which they formerly earned a livelihood. The aim of the centres, the first of which will be opened in a few months, the foundation stone of the building having recently been laid, is to equip disabled soldiers to carry out their occupations as efficiently as those men with two limbs.

One returned soldier without a leg has already been placed as a radio announcer, and another without a leg is doing copywriting for radio purposes. The purpose of the training is not only to equip the men to take their part m civil life but to remove any feeling pf inferiority, because of their disabilities, which they may have.