ADOLESCENT WAR ORPHANS

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25931, 11 October 1949, Page 4

ADOLESCENT WAR ORPHANS

NONE EMIGRATING TO NEW ZEALAND (New Zealand Press Association.) WELLINGTON, Oct. 10. 1 A plan to bring adolescent European ■ war orphans to New Zealand has been : dropped, at least for the time being. ' Comparatively few potential immi- , grants of this kind are now available ■ and the problem that it was thought New Zealand would help to solve has ceased to exist. It was expected that the only difficulty would be in'finding homes for adolescent foreign children; actually the difficulty was rather to find the children. Apparently other countries realised that the boys and girls in the care of the International Refugee Organisation were not undesirable, as had been widely assumed. The proposal that the children should be brought to New Zealand was discussed in July, when it was stated that there were boys and girls, aged from 14 to 18. who had been orphaned by war and were desirable as young citizens. A meeting of representatives of organisations interested in young people, held on July 15 under the auspices of the Inter-Church Council, decided to refer the plan to the organisations represented at the meeting to find out how many homes would be available for the children. At the request of the conference the Labour Department cabled for more information about adolescent displaced persons. It has recently been informed that fewer than 100 remained and that other countries were eager to have them. About a fortnight ago a message stated that if New Zealand wanted these adolescents it must act quicklv. After consultation with the InterChurch Council, the Government decided that adolescent displaced persons being no longer a problem in Europe, the matter should be pursued no further. The committee established by the conference in July is to remain standing in case homeless adolescents become a problem again.