The Press MONDAY, JUNE 20, 1960. Plunket Society And The Health Department

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29235, 20 June 1960, Page 10

The Press MONDAY, JUNE 20, 1960. Plunket Society And The Health Department

It is difficult to take seriously the indignation with which the Minister of Health (Mr Mason) denied that the Health Department intended to end the Plunket Society’s activities. It is now nearly seven months since the Consultative Committee on Infant and Pre-School Health Services reported. This committee 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 that it believed this to be undesirable, and gave good reasons for its belief. After the report was issued the Plunket Society found reasons for fearing that the Health Department was rejecting the advice and guidance of the Consultative Committee. Mr Mason mentions a letter the Plunket Society "circulated widely” at the end of last month; and he says that “largely as a result " of that letter many newspapers “expressed the opinion that the “ department was intent on “ destroying the Plunket “Society”. But that was not the first statement from the Plunket Society, or the first criticism. For instance, on March 29 the director of medical services to the Plunket Society (Dr. N. C. Begg) spoke at a meeting in Christchurch of “the conflict now being waged “ between the Department of “ Health and the Plunket "Society”. Mr Mason has had seven months in which to give the Plunket Society the assurance it has sought: that the Government will implement the consultative committee’s report. He has chosen to remain silent until a few days before the session of Parliament opens. Regardless of the Opposition's attitude, the support members of his own party have given to the Plunket Society- would have forced Mr Mason to define his attitude once the session began.

Mr Mason is perfectly right when he says that complementary services by the department and the society should dovetail; but the Plunket Society’s complaint, as stated by Mrs Ryburn, the society’s Dominion president, concerns the department’s interpretation of the term to mean that the Plunket Society should give up its work in rural areas—abandoning hundreds of supporters and voluntary workers —and confine itself to “cities “and other densely populated “areas”. Mr Mason speaks of the department and the society “ carrying on what might be “ called parallel services ” with which “ the question of over- “ lapping and duplication is “always likely to arise”. But who is responsible for “over- “ lapping and duplication ”? The Plunket Society’s view is that “ since the beginning of “the Second World War there “has been a great increase in “ the Public Health Nursing “Service, and the department “has consequently entered into “competition with the society “in infant welfare work”. Mr Mason mentions the Child Health Council that the Consultative Committee recommended be set up, and says that, whatever form this may take, “there is no reason to suggest “that it will fail to express its “views in complete independ“ence”. The Plunket Society’s view is that the Health Department wishes to relegate the council to the position of a subcommittee on the Board of Health on which departmental voices are dominant. Mr Mason’s statement gives no comfort to the society on these points; the substantial differences between his department and the Plunket Society remain unresolved. The society will hope for better things from the Prime Minister, who has agreed to receive a deputation to discuss the society’s future.