SOLDIER CRAFTSMEN.

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 15978, 21 November 1919, Page 5

SOLDIER CRAFTSMEN.

TRAINING DISABLED MEN WHILE IN HOSPITAL.

To relieve the monotonous hours of disabled Service men still under medical treatment, and at the same time to train them to earn their own.living, the Ministry of- Pensions is setting up centres where technical courses will go side by side with medical treatment.

A start has already been made at Huntingdon, England, where lessons in clock repairing are being given in hospital; while at Slough a number of patients have begun a course of training in unit jewellery, making—i.e., building up from small silver bars (the unit) various forms of ornament. &

In. a few weeks large centres are to be opened at Epsom and Blackpool, with special medical and educational staffs. At the latter place a camp hospital is being turned into a training centre with accommodation for several hundreds of men who will receive instruction in various crafts. They are maintained during the ooures, which are of varying length, and their families receive allowances. Mr E. Wilkinson, E.G.S., Director of Education at Bolton,, and an expert in thte administration of technical schools, who is advising the Ministry in the matter, stated that it is hoped many of the men will qualify as handwork and craft teachers and will be absorbed, after taking the recognised qualifying examinations, in the staffs which will possibly be required whe nthe Education Act of 1918 is in full working order.