Link between welfare, health services needed

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32565, 26 March 1971, Page 10

Link between welfare, health services needed

“A tremendous need” for a link between health and social welfare services, was a large part of the problem that placed the role of the medical social worker at “very much a crucial stage” in New Zealand, said Professor J. Spencer at a medical social workers’ seminar in Christchurch yesterday.

Professor Spencer’s visit is sponsored by the British Council at the request of the New Zealand Association of Medical Social Workers. The general trend toward

the earlier discharge of patients from hospital care into the charge of community health services, and the diversion of patients from the outpatients* department to the general practitioner and into the hands of the domiciliary nurse, meant a growing need for the expanded role of the social worker and a greater co-ordination between hospital and community health services, especially between the general practitioner and the hospital, he said. There needed to be a trend away from the isolated general practitioner toward a group of general practitioners working together in a local health centre in co-ordina-tion with a community health team, increasingly attached to

the general practitioner, he said.

The local Centres would be responsible to the regional authority. “For example in the greater Auckland region there would be a number of local area teams and offices for local neighbourhoods of the city and environs,” he said. Medical social workers would be a part of the local authority team, seconded to related services, and contacted when their type of assistance was needed. This was not yet a reality in Britain, he said. A shortage of workers had prevented the system becoming functional, but “it was a hope and a reasonable hope,”- he said.