"A DOT ON THE MAP"

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 55, 6 March 1937, Page 19

"A DOT ON THE MAP"

AMERICANS SURPRISED

PLUNKET SYSTEM PRAISED

After investigations in New Zealand into social welfare and conditions, Mr. Porter Lee, director of the New York School of Social Work, who has also made inquiries in the Dominion for the Carnegie Foundation, left Auckland this week for Australia, slates the "Auckland Star." With his wife he will spend two months in Australia, and a further two months in South Africa before returning to the United States.

Mrs. Porter Lee has formed a very high opinion of the Plunket nursing work in New Zealand, and she remarked recently that they had nothing in the United States like it, although they had various organisations and work in connection with which child guidance was featured. "New Zealand has made wonderful headway in mothercraft," she said, "and I would like to see work on similar lines spread all over the world. You don't wait for a child to get ill in New Zealand; you put it on the right road to good health, to say nothing of the great comfort to mothers."

Mrs. Porter Lee said that when she returned to New York she intended to do her utmost to make people understand what the Plunket nursing system was, although if anything on the same lines were attempted in the United States it would have to be somewhat different owing to the largely mixed populations there.

The visitor described New Zealand as a delightful country of varied scenery, with a very hospitable people. She commended New Zealand women for their eagerness to do work of a national character.

She added that one surprise for visitors to the Dominion was the size of New Zealand, as the average American simply knew it as a dot on the map.