CRAFT CENTRES

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 283, 24 August 1940, Page 13

CRAFT CENTRES

Needed For Training Of Cripples SUBSIDY OF £2OOO

State Responsibility, Says

Committee A decision to urge the establishment of craft centres for cripples, and to grant as a subsidy for the purpose, was made yesterday by the annual conference in Wellington of the New Zealand Crippled Children Society.

The conference adopted, and referred to its executive committee for appropriate action, a report placed before it by Mr. W. G. Black and Mr. Malcolm Fraser, executive members, and Mr. R. G. Ridling, director of the Wellington Technical College, who was co-opted to assist in preparing the report. This special committee was instructed to report on the advisability of forming craft centres for the purpose of employing cripples unable to find work elsewhere.

Stating the necessity for craft training centres for cripples, the report recommended that in view of the national social services which were evolving in New Zealand, such centres should not be established in institutions owned and operated by the society, but should be a definite responsibility of the State. The society should impress on the health and education departments the urgent necessity of occupational therapy and occupational training centres for cripples. It should request these departments to appoint joint expert committees with the society to examine and report on the question, investigate the extent of existing equipment and facilities, and make recommendations. Conditions Of Subsidy.

To stimulate immediate action, the society should offer a grant or subsidy of £2OO, payable in two equal annual amounts, on the conditions that £lOOO of the sum go toward establishing craft centres for occupational therapy and £lOOO toward provision of special equipment at training centres, and that the grants be so applied that activities of a special character might be established, but without duplication. Such grants might bo supplemented by branches for centres in their own districts.

The report recommended further that the society should subsidize suitable institutions so that sufficient and suitable accommodation be available for maintaining cripples who. required living accommodation away from home. The society should where necessary provide transport to enable them io attend for technical training not locally obtainable. If such centres were established, branches of the society should undertake that cripples in their care would lie given the opportunity of training at these centres providing craft training suitable to the particular disability, by assisting in provision of transport or maintenance in cases where the State was not responsible for them. Government's Responsibility.

The special committee expressed the opinion that educational and vocational training of cripples was a responsibility of the Government, and that the society’s main function, regarding itself as the guardian for the cripple, should be to co-operate to the fullest extent with existing Government institutions by insisting on proper treatment and training, and provision of essential equipment, overcoming any such obstables in the way of the cripple's receiving treatment as transport, maintenance during treatment and training, and subsidy on wages during apprenticeship or employment. Occupational centres for cripples, to perform fully the functions for which they were required, must serve at least three groups of people—those who required training in handicrafts for health purposes, generally covered by the term occupational therapy, those who required occupation as a relief from boredom or depression, and those who required training in handicrafts or mechanical processes as a means of livelihood, in other words, vocational training. Occupational therapy should be a function of the medical services of New Zealand, and selected public hospitals should have as an integral part of their organization such equipment and material as was necessary to give controlled exercises to both child and adult patients. The work must be directed by the doctor in charge of the case, and should be under direct, continuous and skilful supervision. Certilin crippled people, not children alone, no matter what training they were given, could not become even partially self-supporting. Occupational wonk for these allied to therapeutic activities gave relief from boredom and depression. Maintenance of these people should be the responsibility of the State, and training them should be a State social responsibility also. There was a definite need for vocational training for economic reasons for most cripples, but the numbers and widespread location of cases ma de . the establishment of special occupational centres uneconomic and undesirable. Cripple’s Place in Society.

Whenever possible, training should be given locally, so that the trainee would not be removed from home influence, and his abnormality not accentuated by receiving different treatment and training from the normal child. It should be such that he was regarded and regarded himself as an ordinary unit of society, subject to the same social activities and responsibilities as his fellows. This, it was believed, was the function of the technical schools. They were, or could be, equipped to provide the training necessary. More ami more the State aimed at providing universal training, not for a few years, but till a youth became self-supporting economically. No action should therefore be taken by the society that would interfere with the State’s responsibility. It was the society’s function, not. to determine, but to assist, in determining the hospitals and schools where centres should be established, the character and location of centres, whether they should be specialized, and if so in what particular crafts each shpuld specialize. These points should be determined from the national point of view, by responsible experts of the various national institutions concerned, to provide a service complete in itself, without duplication and with coordination of instructional staffs.