Statutory or Voluntary

once again that ways and means have got to be found to produce a real economy in public current expenditure. Enormous programmes of building have been sapping our national finances. Th^ serious and backward structural conditions of very many of the hospitals taken over under the National Health Act in 1948, and especially the hospitals for the mentally ill, will and mus* continue to absorb a large percentage of the Minister of Health's available money for this the "only sacrosanct item" noted in the proposed permissible building programmes. It is alarming to see it stated that the recent expansion of local authorities' expenditure "has been the worst feature of public finance this year". No doubt included in this is a certain amoun1 of expenditure incurred in the administration of the ever-increasing statutory services whid) swell the demand for more and more official facilities and staff for their implementation. It woul'j be out of place here to name and to discuss each of these, but there would appear to be in a" this some scope for a careful reconsideration of why and how, in certain respects, some first-clasj and well-established voluntary services which have proved their great worth over the years, and especially so in the last ten years, are allowed to thin out or even to go into desuetude because "the need is now to be met by an administratively costly statutory system". Fortunately, the peculiar tenacity of the voluntary spirit is not easily submerged. There are & great number of people in this country who, even now, are willing and able to give assistance on ? voluntary basis. The real problem often lies in the provision for even minimal facilities and personnel for administrative and secretarial purposes in such voluntary organizations. Happ>'in some places, including Bristol, some highly valued assistance of this sort is forthcoming, but the method could be extended much more widely as a basis of setting voluntary services on a more steady and stable background. This is specially so in the voluntary assistance concerned with tbe many and varied social services, whose action in many ways could engender a strong liaison, sa>' with the statutory medical services. Through such channels, ways can be developed for educatif1^ the public in the availabilities and proper use of the Health Services. Liaison as between farti'1doctors, the social services, and preventive medicine services, can quite appropriately be built up' The voluntary services can often act in a special way and to function as catalysers of activity their own and as between groups of others. Child Health Services have and should, in fact, bene*1 greatly by these voluntary activities. .