Home For Cerebral Palsied

Press, Volume C, Issue 29444, 21 February 1961, Page 3

Home For Cerebral Palsied

Sir, —I understand that there are at least five homes for cerebral palsied children or older cases, apart from mental asylums, in the North Island and none in Christchurch or the South Island. Is it a fair thing that local parents have to travel far to visit children they can no longer care for at home through age. illness, or other reason? Is it fair to the children who require the love and contact from more easily accessible relatives more frequently than once a year?— Yours, etc..

CIVIC RESPONSIBILITIES. February 17. 1961. IThe secretary of the Canterbury and West Coast branch of the New Zealand Crippled Children Society (Mrs F S. Miller-Mead) replies: “There are no homes specifically for cerebral palsied children or adults in the North Island. The Cerebral Palsy Unit at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Rotorua, is designed to serve the needs of New Zealand as a whole, and is a training centre for cerebral palsied children. This is a highly organised and expensive unit which could not easily be dunlicafed. The only homes are the Wilson Home, which arose out of a bequest from an Auckland family, and is now partly financed by Government funds, and the Pukeora Home for adolescent cripples which caters for crippled adults of all categories, including cerebral oalsied. Wilson Home caters for crippled children of all categories. In the South Island the needs of crippled children who require long-term institutional care are provided by the various hospitals. The Canterbury branch of the New Zealand Crippled Children Society hopes that it will not be long before the demand for places justifies the setting up of a second Pukeora, and that this will be established in the South Island.”]