VOLUNTARY WORK

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23887, 15 August 1939, Page 10

VOLUNTARY WORK

OF PRICELESS VALUE CARE OF CRIPPLED CHILDREN ' "From the point of view of the voluntary organisation there are those who protest that the voluntary organisation is out of place in work which it is the duty of the State to undertake. To them the word 'voluntary, in such a connection, suggests a condescending benevolence which is wholly distasteful," states the annual report of the New Zealand Crippled Children Society. "The work, they argue is or should be a national obligation, which ought not to be dependent in any respect On the charitable impulses of kindly individuals, uncertain, and, at best, limited, as these must be. but is essentially of a kind to be handled nationally—the State alone being in a position to control and co-ordinate on an adequate scale. Now those who seek to exclude the volutary element altogether forget that an organisation set up and financed by enthusiasts in the cause, while it may have its weaknesses, will yet possess an elasticity necessarily denied a body, whose financial resources are levied by assessment on the general public, and that this elasticity should be of priceless value. "It is the function and privilege of the voluntary organisation to go ahead pioneering the unknown fields, testing and exploring in ways which the State-controlled oody hesitates, and rightly so, to attempt. . "In these days of systematised efficiency the voluntary organisation does not represent.- as some people seem to suppose, thp inexperienced efforts of an assembled group of amateur philanthropists. Rather is it the means by which skilled pioneers are free to prepare the way for the State's subsequent advanced, and experienced workers are provided to cover ground which, open as it is only to the personal touch, must always remain outside the official province. "The systematic care of the cripple child (using the phrase in its broadest sense) is at a comparatively early stage, and still largely experr mental. Moreover, the work is, of its essence, personal, concerned fundamentally with the requirements of individuals. No two cases can bo handled alike, but each one has it? own problems which, before they can be solved, may raise unexpected issues leading far away from the original one of physical disablement. For both these reasons the work needs the assistance that a voluntary organisation is especially qualified to give. Such an organisation as ours, keeping as it were a little ahead of the State and taking advantage of its independence, can investigate and try out newmethods alike in the sphere of clinical work and of the training and employment of the disabled. Experience thus obtained will indicate the lines on which public authorities may themselves most usefully incur expenditure. The investigation of complicated individual circumstances arising out of after-care the teaching of occupationa' work will probably always be more easily undertaken by voluntary effort than by the State. "Close' co-operation between the two, it is stated, is resulting in a comprehensive scheme combining the advantages inherent in both."