CHARITABLE AID BOARD.

Otago Witness, Issue 2437, 28 November 1900, Page 34

CHARITABLE AID BOARD.

The regular monthly meeting of the Charitable Aid Board Committee was held at the Town Hall on the 15th inst., and was attended by Messrs Chisholm (chairman), Haynes, Miller, Smith, Fiddis, Wilson, and Green. The Benevolent Institution's requisition for £600 was presented and passed for payment. A requisition for £500 in connection with the septic tank at the institution was also made, this being additional on £100 already paid. Mr Haynes explained that the reason the additional sum was requisitioned for was that the syndicate at Home had thought it wise to make provision for a larger population and for a correspondingly larger number of inmates in the institution. The total cost of the work would be £800, and it would be finished by. the end of the month. The probability was that they would have to come to the board for anbther £200. They would, however, be well within their estimate as far as ordinary expenditure was concerned, a saving of about £1200 being effected in the year by the old-age pensions. As far as the septic tank was concerned, provision had been made for double the number of inmates at present in the institution, and he wished to emphasise this fact : that the increased cost was due to the introduction of the system being quite new here, and the architect consequently had a difficulty in arriving at a correct estimate. - The £500 asked for was passed for payment. The Dunedin Female Refuge requisitioned for £13, the amount being passed for payment. Letters were received from the Caversham, St. Mary's, Burnham, and South Dunedin Industrial Schools" in reply to communications from the secretary concerning the board-ing-out of children who had been committed to their respective schools. Mr Hajrnes thought that they as an institution ' should not pay any more for children kept in the"se private schools than they did for those kept in the public institutions. If these private schools chose to keep the children in their schools, the public body should not suffer for it. Mr Miller pointed out that the Government schools were used for filtering the children through, and boarding them out at present. Either the Government policy was radically wrong, or the present system of allowing the children to be retained in the private industrial schools. The Chairman said these private schools seemed to make a practice of retaining the children at all costs, and the board had to maintain them. He thought the attention of Government should be drawn to the fact that the children were not boarded out with private families, which would certainly be in the interests of the children themselves, and would relieve the Charitable Aid Board. H« considered that the private schools should make an effort in this direction. As a board, they should instruct the secretary to communicate with the Government and draw their attention to the fact that these private institutions were not working on the same lines as the Government institutions, inasmuch as while the Charitable Aid Board was relieved by the Government institutions boarding the children out, the private schools I were retaining the children at an increased cost. It stood to reason that a child was better off in a private family than in an. institution. A motion in the form suggested was carried.