STILL NEEDED

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 90, 13 October 1939, Page 9

STILL NEEDED

PRIVATE AGENCIES

FOR CHARITABLE WORK

That there are still positive functions demanding the retention of private agencies in the field of charitable work, although the Government has entered this field to an increasing extent, was maintained by Mr. V. C. Jones, in an address given in Lower Hutt. Such institutions as the V.M.C.A., he said, were coming, to be regarded as essential social agencies. It might be argued that there is a great waste and duplication and inefficiency and a lack of value in private agency work, but'this was not so. The statistics of any private agency, efficiently conducted, could more than hold their own with Governmental functions in a similar field. "If through legislative trend the populace at large is not in a position to continue their support to the private agency, then this will mean the decreasing of efficiency, .the lessening of its contribution to the people of the community, and it will resolve itself in maintaining a structure rather than a creative contribution to the humanities." Mr. Jones suggested that private agencies, free from bureaucratic control, could develop as they saw the needs of the day. They could meet the needs and interests of the individual as quickly as that individual applies for help. The private agency, through its leadership, had a motivation which was primarily one of life-giving service, whereas the bureaucratic control tended to make the service merely a matter of routine procedure. Finally, the private agency gave the community at large, an opportunity to express in a practical way, such as financial support, their feeling and sympathy for humanity at large, and for a certain institution in particular.