Developing child care

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33932, 27 August 1975, Page 6

Developing child care

“To help the babies and save the mothers.” So the Director-General of Education (Mr W. L. Renwick) summed up the social object of child care as advocated in the Parliamentary select committee’s report on the role of women in New Zealand society.

This rearranging of the] Plunket Society’s slogan per-! haps symbolised the evolu-l tion of attitudes to early J childhood education dis-, I cussed by Mr Renwick. New Zealand’s first convention on early childhood care and development, is being held this week at the University of Canterbury at! Ham.

Mr Renwick presented the convention with a challenge> in the car of children of I working mothers and solo' parents: he urged constructive thinking about situ-) ations “as they are, not as! we would like them to be.”

His department was now; establishing pilot child-care; centres in the North Island; and training courses for; child-care staff. It was also! providing staff and advice! for existing child-care cen-' tres. Cdrrespondence courses were also to be prepared fori child-care centre workers.)

who may not always be able to attend full-time training courses.

An increasing number of women are now looking for child-care facilities which are not an extension of the home, but a substitute for it. he told the convention.

The Committee of Inquiry into Pre-School Education had found there were working mothers and solo parents who needed to have their young children off their hands for a much greater amount of time than the rporning or afternoon sessions of a playcentre or a kindergarten. These parents could not give their time. In the three years since that inquiry reported, the issues had been transformed. The 1972 Labour Party Manifesto introduced the phrase “early childhood edui cation,” “reminding us that [it comprehends vastly more I that the activities of play- ; centres and kindergartens, land the needs of children I from two and a half to five years old. The child-care chapter in the report on women was devoted entirely to ways of increasing the availability of acceptable child-care services — services that would be educaeionai and not merely custodial. Kindergartens and play- | centres were clearly seen to

be Of only marginal interest.! Nor was the argument of the report solely concerned with problems of working ’

mothers and solo parents. For children of two and a half and older whose moth-

ers’ circumstances and needs could not be met through existing forms of pre-school provision, a vast increase in day-care services was recommended. The women needing more child-care facilities wanted their children cared for, said

Mr Renwick, in the best possible environment. But it was a service they were looking for, not a pre-school experience they could share with their children voluntarily. They needed all-day care for their children, five days

la week, in many cases for : children under two or three I years. This presented problems for educationalists.

“Most of, us who have thought about early childhood find the circumstances

of these parents so foreign to our experience, and the situation cf their children so fraught with the possibility of damage, that we are illequipped to find satisfactory educational, answers to the problems they pose,” he said.

“We have to break the mould of our own convictions and attitudes before we can begin to think con-; structively about finding so-! lutions to situations as they! are, not as we would like them to be.”