Working for N.Z.’s healthy, bi-cultural future

Press, 18 May 1989, Page 10

Working for N.Z.’s healthy, bi-cultural future

as a girl, Barbara Chapman remembers “going to Playcentre” regularly after school, where sessions in a big old hall were attended by up to 50 children aged two to five.

Her mother was a centre supervisor and director of training for the Canterbury Playcentre Association in its - early years.

"I could still name many of those children,” she says, “and their mothers, some of whom I still see when out shopping.”

Her mother’s involvement kept her in touch with the movement as it grew, and when her own children were born, she took them to playcentre too. After three weeks she found herself treasurer of the centre.

It must have given her a taste for administration, for she is now president of the national federation, which represents 16,000 families in 644 centres from Te Kao in the north to Stewart Island in the south.

Last week-end she was presiding at the federation’s annual conference, held this year in Hamilton. The federation celebrated its fortieth anniversary last year, shortly before one of its pioneers, Gwen Somerset, died. Past and present Playcentre members have contributed to the move- ■ ment’s first commercially marketed book on parenting, “Hugs and Hassles,” which is dedicated to the memory of Gwen Somerset.

Among the 29 contributions are articles on peaceful play, children and television, breaking through cultural stereotypes and separation —

you and your child. The headings in the book are in both English and Maori. The 350 parent delegates to the centre made a commitment to biculturalism and publicly endorsed the Treaty of Waitangi. Joy Anderson, of Wellington, said that as educators playcentre members had a special responsibility to help the country in its journey toward becoming a truly bi-cultural society, a first step on the way to becoming multi-

cultural. “By the year 2000 45 per cent of New Zealand children born will be of Polynesian descent,” she said. The federation was asked to form a working party to ascertain areas of playcentre that are culturally inappropriate and to suggest improvements. The conference also urged the Government to include a clause in the Health Act requiring supermarkets to provide public toilets. Delegates spoke of the

problems of spending up to an hour in a supermarket, with toddlers, often on a long trip from country areas, without access to toilets. Most public places catering for more than 100 people were required to provide toilets and at peak times supermarkets held many more than that yet majof supermarket chains had no policy of providing them, believing that it was not their responsibility. The dangers to a foetus of a mother drinking alcohol should be more

widely publicised, the conference decided.

A remit urging the Minister of Health, Ms Clark, to publicise the dangers to the developing baby if mothers' drank even moderate amounts of alcohol while pregnant was carried.

Early childhood education centres, like playcentres, should be signposted by the Automobile Association, the conference agreed. Delegates want the National Roads Board to authorise such sign-post-ing so that playcentres were taken out of their current category of places not to be signed. Barbara Chapman says by and large Playcentre welcomes the changes to education administration contained in “Before Five.”

“The requirement for equity for early childhood services has to mean more money for Playcentre, but there are certain anxieties, for instance for proper recognition for our education and training, and provision for buildings, funding and maintenance.” At the moment, centres get Government grants on a sessional basis, and associations receive grants to help with training and liaison work. Playcentre receives the same 4:1 subsidy for buildings as kindergartens, although very few centres have their own buildings; most still use community buildings. “Other than people having to write a charter, we know that parents can run centres, handle finance, and take responsibility. It is almost recognition of what we’ve proved over the last 40 years,” she says.