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REVIEW
training and preparation for a new life, and from the establishment of day vocational training centres where group therapy discussions are a special feature. Another residential home is soon to be opened. In resettlement estates and new towns, community and social centres have been set up to help people to achieve a sense of belonging and through this to find more meaning in life. The need for healthy outlets for our youth is being met in part by clubs, training and recreation centres, mobile libraries, camping and special summer projects. Their growing interest in outdoor activities is being par- ticularly fostered and developed by active co-operation between the Social Welfare Department and voluntary agencies.
A LOOK INTO THE FUTURE
The review of 'A Problem of People' in 1956 finished with a look into the future, and we should be no less courageous; for if there obviously remain daunting burdens to be shouldered, the achieve- ments of the past must give some feeling of confidence in searching the horizon. Many criticisms can be, and have been, made of our performance, and no doubt will be again. But surely not even the sharpest critic will deny that progress has been made in almost every field and substantial progress in some, that if life is still hard and difficult for many it is also, for many, less grinding and more tinged with hope than it was. Much of what has been decided has still to be executed. Long-term housing plans have been laid, but quickly though the buildings go up, many will not benefit from them for a long time. In some areas decisions have yet to be reached, and implementation is that much further behind. The possibilities of some scheme for social insurance have yet to be weighed; the extent to which services to young people and to the handicapped can and should be expanded is not yet determined; the question of improving the basic allocation of space in subsidized housing, while continuing to provide for more persons year by year, is be- ginning to suggest itself as a new aspect of the tension between quantity and quality which appears everywhere in this review. We do not know the answers to these or a score of other questions, but we can be sure that, when we seek to frame them, they will have to take account not only of the worthy and human desire for improvement that so many entertain, but also of our economic capacity to sustain ever increasing burdens, and of the desirability
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