Domestic purposes benefit

Press, 24 May 1977, Page 18

Domestic purposes benefit

Sir, —We wish to point out that for almost every separated person tire first six months apart from one’s spouse is a period of personal crisis. For women alone with children it is an endless coping, not only with immediate family needs and responsibilities, but with social acceptance and awesome, ever present unmentionables — “emotional problems,” feelings of guilt, rejection, and hatred, for instance. However, it may also be a time of grieving, constructive reassessment and new beginnings. This is no time for the additional burden of reduced benefits and increased financial worries. These induce extra stress and exacerbate tense situations, thereby hindering healthy readjustment and delaying personal growth and development. Thank goodness for an emphasis on counselling. Let these initial months be a time, not for subsistence level lifestyles and additional strain, but for thorough, sympathetic investigation and counselling, all with a view to ultimately reducing the taxpayers’ bill. —Yours, etc., HELEN JONKERS, ROSEMARY STRATHDEE. May 21, 1977.