TV report criticises Salvation Army

Press, 28 May 1981, Page 7

TV report criticises Salvation Army

NZPA London Destitute wanderers who cannot raise the money are turned away nightly, often heartlessly, from Salvation Army hostels in Britain it has been alleged in a television documentary, "For God's Sake Care."

An ATV investigative team visited 27 of the charity's 42 hostels pretending to be homeless and unemployed: and in all but four cases they were turned away because they did not have enough money to pay the fixed charges of up to $9.50 a night for a bed.

In interviews with hostel residents and former Salvation Army officers and social workers they were told of men being evicted from hostels for not attending the daily religious service or for wetting their beds, and of vagrants being assaulted by staff.

Hostel managers were also accused of selling clothes and food to the inmates which had been given to

them in the belief that they would be distributed free. The programme, made for ATV by two independent producers, Claudia Milne and David Jones, asserted that only 14 per cent of the Salvation Army’s spending went on charitable and social causes.

Instead 67 pence of every pound given by the public was spent on the Army's evangelical and overseas ser- ■ vices and on maintaining its headquarters and churches. Commissioner Anna Hannevik, in charge of the Army's social services department. admitted that directives sent by her office to army hostel managers were not always acted upon. She said that the hostels had to be self-financing but that no man was meant to be turned away even if he could not afford the daily charge. Staff who sold clothes instead of distributing them free to those in need might be doing so to make "a little on the side.”

Stuart Clarke, who spent 16 years living in army hostels, said that staff had'taken little or no interest in the residents' welfare.

"Very little allowance" was made for men suffering from mental or physical illnesses, and he told of men suffering from epilepsy who were either fined or evicted from hostels because they wet their beds. In a letter to “The Times,” printed yesterday.’ the General of the Salvation Army (Mr Arnold Brown) defended his organisation’s record.

"The Salvation Army is a movement for Christian evangelism taking the Gospel to the unchurched. “It is not concerned only with the provision of food, clothing or shelter but with the totality of human need,” he said.

"Our aim is not simply to ameliorate but to assist” Divine grace in changing the life-style and raising the hopes of the downtrodden and dispossessed.”