Welfare under review

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32553, 12 March 1971, Page 3

Welfare under review

(Neto Zealand Press Association)

HAMILTON, March 11

Social welfare was a multi-million dollar business and the shareholder, the New Zealand taxpayer, was not getting his money’s worth, the president of the Association of Social Workers (Major N. C. Manson) said in Hamilton today.

Major Manson, of Wellington, is visiting Hamilton to meet a leading British authority on social work, Professor J. Spencer, and to further a review of social services by the association. “We are not anti-Govern-ment, nor anti-anything, but we are so concerned about duplication and lack of training that we have started this review of social services, to be presented to the Government in May,” he said. “For instance, the associaI tion considers the recent amalgamation of the Child Welfare Division and the Social Security Department to be a marriage of convenience—we don’t think it was the right step to take in setting up a department for social welfare.”

“By cutting down on duplication of effort and starting a large-scale training programme for social workers, we believe a lot of money can be saved,” he said. It was the aim of the association to suggest plans to assist in the training both of voluntary and full-time workers. 1 “Social work in New Zea-

land has been directed more along the material line of giving a hand-out, but in this modern age people have other needs than mere physical survival. We have got to step away from the bread-and-butter subsistence idea.”