SOCIAL SERVICE

Southland Times, Issue 17736, 14 August 1917, Page 2

SOCIAL SERVICE

LOCAL PRESBYTERIAN HOME. Some lime ago the local branch of the Presbyterian Social Service Association invited offers of property suitable for a bocial Service Home in Invercargill. We understand that a number of suitable properties were offered to the Committee and that in the course of a few weeks one of these will be accepted and a Home callable of accommodating 30 children will be opened in Invercargill under the care of the Misses McLauchlan, two ladies who gained their experience in the Dunedin Homes of this Association. The work in which the Association is engaged makes a strong appeal to public support. The encouragement which the Association has received in Dunedin speaks for itself. There the Association now has three Homes, its property is worth £IB,OOO and is unencumbered. One of the Homes, valued at £7OOO, was a gift from the late Mr R. Glendining, and the Association also received from Mr Glendining a legacy of £SOOO as an endowment for its work. The Association is now making an appeal in the Otago district for funds to establish a Home for aged people. It has already received for this purpose a donation of a tea-acre block of land valued at a conservative estimate at £3OOO. It requires in addition £7OOO in cash, and hopes to raise that sum within a month. There is already £I3OO in hand. The cost of carrying on the Dunedin Homes is £4OOO per annum and last year the Association’s income was just on £SOOO. The Association has 350 young people in its care at the present time, 00 of whom are at the front. Of the boys who have passed through its hands 127 are now at the front and seven have obtained commissions. The Association’s Homes are not charitable institutions. The whole aim is to provide children who have been deprived by circumstances of their home with their parents with another home that will as nearly as possible fulfil similar functions. There are children in the institutions who come from excellent homes, and who are receiving under the care of the Association the training and the opportunities their parents would have given them. The Association’s boys are in the teaching profession, in the Post and Telegraph Department, in offices and factories. How the Association’s Homes are esteemed may be judged from the fact that they have in their care 30 children of fathers who are at the front. These children are motherless, and when the fathers enlisted they had to make provision for the care and training of their children in their absence. Eventually they entrusted them to the Presbyterian Social Service Association, and it is the aim of the Association as far as possible to take the father’s place. The Homes are not denominational, and while they are conducted by the Presbyterian Church they are open to all. At the present time there are 48 Southland children in the Dunedin Institutions, and as accommodation there is taxed the Dunedin Committee realised that it would soon be necessary either to open a Home in Invercargill or another institution in Dunedin. Reference has already been made to the number of soldiers’ children in the Homes. The Association has every reason to believe that when the Second Division is called upon large numbers of children will be entrusted to it and it must make preparation for this work. As there wore already 48 Southland children in the Dunedin Homes the proper thing to do appeared to be to open a Home in Invercargill and the project was taken up by a committee of the Southland Presbytery. The Home will probably be in operation within a month. The management will be in the hands of a local committee, the Home will be conducted by the Misses McLauchlan under the supervision of the General Superintendent, Mr E. A. Axelsen. Accommodation will be provided for about 30 children, and 20 will be brought down from Dunedin to relieve the congestion there. This will leave .a margin of 10 to work upon. The Association is entirely dependant upon voluntary subscriptions not only to establish its institutions but to keep them running. Mr Axelsen has paid a number of visits to this district, and he is satisfied that when the work of the Association is generally understood the support accorded to it will be just as generous here as in Dunedin. It may be mentioned that when Mr Axelsen arrived on Saturday Mr H. Fowler, of Kennington, waited upon him and offered him five acres of the best dairying land at Kennington as a site for the Home. To his regret Mr Axelsen had to decline this offer on the ground that a Home built at Kennington would be too far from Invercargill for practical use. He has hopes, however, that in days to come an extension of the work will enable the Association to avail itself of Mr Fowler’s generosity. When the Invercargill Home is opened no doubt the committee of management will take steps to bring the work of the Association fully before the people of the district.