river banks or, indeed, in "platform" huts on the rivers themselves. These very deprived people do not appear in any number amongst the boat
fugees. They have had neither the will, the knowledge nor the where- withal for so drastic an upheaval.
RESULTS
The majority of those that have come out by boat have had the initiative to plan to do so; some did this with the definite purpose in mind of re- establishing their patterns of free-enterprise survival techniques in a non-communist arena. In Britain the painful realities of their new situation have come only after they had left the community support of reception centres and started to come to terms with all the complexities of their communication difficulties, of the unfamiliar pattern of surviving through welfare-state 'hand-outs', indeed with the fact that they and their family can be better off in idleness than by struggling to earn resources through their own efforts.
For the majority of middle-aged and elderly refugees the massive attitudinal adjustments required are impossible to make. Added to this problem is a loss of status within their own family group and the frustration at an unnatural growing dependence on their children, for whom the acquisition of language skills is a simpler matter.
It is for this particular group, therefore, that specialised patterns of on-going support need to be devised. Counselling is not enough where hope has died. New vistas need to be opened, new patterns of functioning suggested, new methods of communication devised not only with the indigenous population but with compatriots and family groups who have shared this common background of culture, escape and adjustment. Without this help impossible tensions can build up in the family itself leading to a total breakdown and further suffering.
This situation can come to comparatively young families, particularly where many with married children have been resettled with parents and siblings.
Amongst the "boat people" who have left Vietnam, there are, not unnaturally, a high percentage of young unattached people for whom the decision to leave was comparatively easy but for whom the problems of adjustment can be even greater than for those who come with natural family links. Unless continuing special support provisions and understanding counselling services are available for these young people there is the likelihood that they will, particularly in urban areas, be attracted to the less desirable groupings of the indigenous population,
nce they have absorbed and so assumed the attitudes and frustrated aspirations of our own young unemployed of whatever ethnic background. It can be assumed that some Vietnamese youth will bring a potential for destructive violence, nurtured in their own war-time childhood experiences that can be calculated to undermine public attitudes to the whole Vietnamese group to a totally unwarranted degree.
On the whole, the Vietnamese are, in common with most Asian ethnic groups, quietly accepting, hard-working, gregarious, friendly and generous. The 'boat people' are survivors but dangerous tensions are already building up as their natural inclinations are frustrated and blocked. Tensions that are dangerous for the individuals, particularly those of the more mature age group, and dangerous for the whole group's ultimately successful adjustment to life with the British community. It is in the quest to combat these problems that the following lines of action are being explored:-
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