WOMAN SENT TO HOME

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28284, 23 May 1957, Page 21

WOMAN SENT TO HOME

Order Brings Protest Both sides of the case should be heard before any person was committed to any of the North Canterbury Hospital Board’s institutions, said the chairman (Dr. L. C. L. Averill), at yesterday’s meeting of the board. “It is a surprise to me that anyone can be committed by a Magistrate to one of our homes,” he said. Dr. Averill was commenting on a protest by Miss M. B. Howard, M. that a voluntary organisation had obtained a Court order after being told that the Jubilee Home was already full. “That woman, I presume, has been stuck in a passage; the place is full to the seams,” said Miss Howard. The secretary to the Society for the Protection of Home and Family had asked that the woman be admitted to the Jubilee Home, she said, and had been told the home was full. “That same day the secretary went straight to the Magistrate and got an order committing this woman to the home,” said Miss Howard. She was concerned that the woman involved should have been committed to the Jubilee Home among clean-living women, said Mrs G. E. Boyd. She was not a desirable person. Assurance Mrs T. Green, chairman of the benevolent committee, said she had interviewed the Magistrate, and could give an assurance that it would not nappen again. The woman, however, had not been committea direct to the Jubilee Home—she was to stay with the Salvation Army as long as they could keep her. “In future we will be consulted first,” said Mrs Green. Previously the committee had a working arrangement with the Health Department, under which opportunity was given to persuade a person to go voluntarily if there was room. • However, there was legislation permitting such a committal.