Child Care Centres “Poor Relations”

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31771, 30 August 1968, Page 2

Child Care Centres “Poor Relations”

"The Preet” Special Servlet AUCKLAND.

Child care centres were the poor relations of the pre-school movement in New Zealand, largely due to public apathy and ignorance, said Mrs Sonja Davies, of Nelson, president of the New Zealand Association of Child Care Centres.

She was speaking at a regional meeting of the association introducing a new training scheme requiring a basic certificate in child care.

She felt Victorian attitudes and misconceptions about “backyard nurseries" were the major reason for the lack of support for child care centres. Important Stages “Unemployment has heightened the need for child care centres In major cities,” Mrs Davies said. “It is an established fact that the first five years of a

child’s life are the most Important stages in Its development

“If the child Is happy and well adjusted when it starts school it has every chance of becoming a well-adjusted adult. If it has suffered adversely because it has been away from its mother, the child starts school emotionally disturbed.

“It is obvious that if more money is spent during the early stages, providing adequate facilities and trained personnel, less money will be spent on teen-age delinquents and Borstal candidates.” Mrs Davies said child care nurseries catered mostly for children at private kindergartens, play-centres, community play centres, day nurseries, factory nurseries, specialist nurseries, residential nurseries and shoppers’ creches. Many are the children of solo parents, who have been separated, widowed or divorced, the children of unmarried mothers or professional women who have been asked to return to work and fill the work force. Mrs Davies said many families living in Auckland found they could not afford the high rents and the mothers were forced to work for economic reasons. “Others are the children of

women who have suffered mental or physical breakdowns and can only maintain the family unit if they have part-time child care,” she said. No Relatives “I have mentioned only the underprivileged children and not those who live in areas where there are no kindergartens or play centres. I have not mentioned the mothers with three or four pre-school children who have no relatives to baby-sit for them while they attend a meeting, visit the doctor or dentist or go shopping,” Mrs Davies said.

“We need a survey of the needs of working mothers, one well-equipped State nursery in each main centre, a change in public attitude toward child care centres and an upgrading in the standard of child care authorities,” she said. Mrs Davies said she strongly supported the emerging group of university mothers who were establishing creches at university so they could complete their degrees, and return to the work force when their children had grown up.