HANDICAPPED PERSONS

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32567, 29 March 1971, Page 5

HANDICAPPED PERSONS

Acceptance main need New Zealand had only one medical social worker who was adequately trained to deal with deaf people, said the lecturer in education of the deaf at Christchurch Teachers’ College (Mr M. Parsons) at the national medical social workers’ seminar in Christchurch on Friday.

He was speaking in a panel discussion entitled “Communicating with the disabled.”

Social workers of great expertise were needed to counsel and assist parents who were finding it difficult to adjust to having a deaf child, and those deaf persons whose handicap had caused emotional and social maladjustment, he said. Handicapped persons tended to' have fewer and a smaller range of friends and contacts than a person with unimpaired faculties. The job of the social worker was to enlarge this restricted “life space,” he said. “The handicap should not dominate the person. A [ handicapped person needs acceptance, not pity,” said the speech therapist at the Christchurch Public Hospital (Miss M. Ellis). They had the same likes, dislikes and desires as the normal cross-section of people. Too often they were treated as sub-human when their mental faculties were unimpaired, said the welfare officer for the Foundation for the Blind (Miss G. Chandler).