Plunket Society And The Health Department

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29222, 4 June 1960, Page 12

Plunket Society And The Health Department

There seems little doubt that the Health Department is persisting with its efforts to bring the Plunket Society under de-

partmental control, in defiance of the findings of the Consultative Committee on Infant and Pre-School Health Services. This committee, which sat under the chairmanship of a former Supreme Court Judge, Sir George Finlay, had, as one of its primary tasks, to decide whether the infant care activities of the Plunket Society should be taken over by the Health Department. The committee reported in December that it believed this to be undesirable, and it gave three good reasons for its belief. The first, and least important, was that the cost to the State would be much greater than at present. Second, on the wider ground of public good, the committee held the case for the retention of Plunket nurses under the jurisdiction of the society was “ beyond question ”. The copnmittee doubted whether mothers would use to the same extent a purely governmental organisation; and it thought that the specialist services of Plunket nurses were more valuable in infant and pre-school child care than the services of nurses more generally occupied could be. The committee’s third reason —and probably the most important—was its belief that the Plunket Sociey was “a mani- “ festation of self-help in “ possibly its highest form ”. It

would, the committee said, “be “ calamitous to destroy it in “favour of further dependence “ on the State ”.

In the face of these unequivocal recommendations of a committee set up by the Government and before which the Health Department presented its case, it is astonishing that the Plunket Society should now deem it necessary to organise support for its efforts to maintain its independence. In the Finlay report there were some criticisms which, the Plunket Society acknowledged, must be taken seriously. But it seems that the Health Department is not content that the Plunket Society should put its house in order in accordance with the Finlay committee’s recommendations; the department wants the society to vacate its house and let the department in to undisputed possession. In nearly six months since the Finlay committee reported, Mr Mason, Minister of Health, has remained strangely silent He should delay no longer tn making known the Government’s intentions. The choice is clear enough: the Government must accept the findings of the committee it appointed or throw its report into the wastepaper basket. The public should be under no illusions about the consequences of the second alternative. The Government would be pronouncing sentence of death on the Plunket Society —after the jury had returned a verdict of not guilty.