Wardens for the elderly suggested

Press, Issue 32535, 19 February 1971, Page 2

Wardens for the elderly suggested

(New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, February 18. On both humanitarian and financial grounds, the policy of caring for old people in rest homes and old people’s homes is in need of review, the Royal Commission on Social Security was told today.

Making submissions, Dr J. L. Newman, a former medical superintendent of Cornwall Hospital, said: “We are still in the institutional phase of thinking, although experience has shown that removal from ordinary life into an institution can have disastrous consequences.” He said that a British study revealed that old people in homes are “deprived of intimate family relationships, and can rarely find substitutes which are more than a pale imitation of those enjoyed by most people in the general community.”

The study said: “The result for the individual seems to be a gradual process of depersonalisation,” said Dr Newman.

There was no reason to Sse that in New Zealand _ i were substantially different, he said. In future policy, the emphasis should be on independent dwellings and the provision of a warden’s service, he said. The warden could be paid by Social Security as a home help, he suggested. Her house might be omit* with a Health Department subsidy, and her husband paid as a caretaker.