Birthright plea on widows’ earnings

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33068, 8 November 1972, Page 19

Birthright plea on widows’ earnings

While the Government thought that fatherless families w’ere not to be placed in a better financial position than families with working fathers, Birthright thought otherwise, the organisation’s annual report said.

Mr G. A. Lau, the president, said that it was very disappointing that the Royal Commission on Social Security had not accepted Birthright’s submissions on widow’s earnings, and basically, the Government had accepted the commission’s recommendations.

Mr Lau gave as an example, the present situation of a widow working full time and earning $6O a week. She would have 64c more than if she worked part-time for $2B, because of the effect of earnings on the Social Security benefit. He said that there were a number of reasons why relief should be given to widows with families, who were working. “In the first place, a large number of cases where the father is the breadwinner, the mother is also working, so that the family income is substantially higher than that which has been used as a yardstick to fix the earning allowance for mothers.” Overlooked was the fact that in the family where the father was not available home repair and maintenance costs were higher. Mr Lau said that the most important reason was that there was a greater tendency for children to go wrong, if in addition to the loss of one parent, there was also stringent financial hardship.

“One would have thought that everything should have been done to bring the standard of living of a widow’s family above the

absolute minimum and give her children similar opportunities to those that other children have, and would have, if the father was still alive,” Mr Lau said. Birthright, at June 31, had 3518 families, with 10,037 children under the care of its 31 branch societies. The number was increasing rapidly. Unfortunately, there was not the same increase in counsellors, and Birthright would have to look at ways of getting more, Mr Lau said. There must be many men in the community who would be prepared to spend some of their time in assisting fatherless families by counselling, and by taking an interest in their problems—if they became aware of the real need of such families,” Mr Lau said.