AFTER AN AIR RAID

Greymouth Evening Star, 22 January 1942, Page 6

AFTER AN AIR RAID

INFORMATION SERVICE. Of all the services provided by the Government and local authorities for the protection and relief of civilian air-raid victims, the most neglected has been the ' information service, states a writer in the “Manchester Guardian.” Yet this is, in a real sense, the most important of all. since welfare services, however well planned and diligently prepared, are valueless if trie people for whose benefit they exist do not know how or where to take advantage of them. And investigations have proved that in most areas subject to heavy bombing, only a small minority of the people affected even knew of the existence of the services of which they stood in need.

It is true that, the necessary information is always “available” in the sense that the conscientious citizen who reads his newspaper carefully, visits the public notice-board regularly, and knows where to find the municipal information bureau can always, at some considerable expense of time and trouble, keep himself informed about the arrangements that concern him. But the plain fact, which well-informed councillors and officials are prone to ignore, is that the vast majority of town-dwellers are profoundly ignorant of the workings of their local government and cannot be persuaded to go out of their way to inform themselves about the services at their disposal. “PRE-EDUCATION.” It is therefore essential for the smooth working of the air-raid welfare services that every effort should I be made to “pre-educate” the population by placing in the hands of each householder ah outline of the assistance he may need and clear directions to the place where he can get it. It is not enough to put up signs outside rest centres and to keep the local notice boards up to date — though many authorities have neglected even thpco elementary steps.

It is also necessary to distribute leaflets to every household. Otherwise local authorities are bound to have much public confusion to contend with amid all the difficulties that follow a raid. The second essential is to make both the information service and the welfare services available on the spot after a raid has occurred, and to bring them into contact with the people who have not been adequately “pre-educated.” Otherwise an airraid victim must first find the information centre and may afterward have to spend two or ’ three days traipsing from one’to another of 10 or 20 offices scattered all over the

town. It is the absence of such arrangements rather than the inadequacy of the relief services themselves that has been responsible for most of the aimless mass evacuations that have threatened to disorganise completely the life of .some stricken communities. The best scheme devised for this

purpose and one that should be generally adopted is to install in every rest centre after a raid administrative officers of the agencies responsible for relief and welfare services, as well as representatives of the food and national registration officers. In addition, each rest centre should have an information bureau staffed

by patient, sympathetic people, charged with the duty of seeing to it that every person who attends the centre is not only directed to the proper official for the service he requests, but is also informed about all the services which other officials can render in his case and about which he rnay be ignorant. > ‘ ' -