Heightened need seen for Plunket education

Press, 22 October 1986, Page 9

Heightened need seen for Plunket education

Lack of parenting skills and intuitive mothering heightens the need for continuing Plunket education, according to the Plunket Society’s director of nursing services, Mrs Anne Cressey. The value of supporting and educating young parents in "probably the most important role they will have in life” could not be underestimated, she said at the society’s national conference in Christchurch yesterday. The belief of the society’s founder, Sir Truby King, that parenting skills would be passed from generation to generation, thus ending the need for continuing education, had not proved true, she said.

Parenting skil|s were

not usually passed on, and intuitive mothering was not in-built. Early and ongoing education in parenting was essential. An understanding of society’s pressures on parents was also needed, she said. During the recent closing of the Tasman Pulp and Paper mill at Kawerau extra time was put in by Plunket nurses to help families needing extra care. Flexibility of staffing was important to allow extra help in times of such stress or intermitten population explosions, caused by such events, as the "think big” projects. The workload on Plunket nurses was steadily increasing, y she

While the number of live births in New Zealand last year had increased only 100 the number of new baby cases first seen by Plunket nurses substantially increased.

In spite of high caseloads, Plunket nurses kept 96 per cent of their new baby cases under supervision.

Eighty-seven per cent of these had been given their triple vaccination and polio injection by their first birthday.

Because of Plunket’s concern about cot deaths, home visiting in many “at risk” areas was increased, which often meant rescheduling nurse’s time from clinics to home visits.