The Northern Advocate "NORTHLAND FIRST" Registered for transmission through the Post as a Newspaper. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7, 1945. CHILD WELFARE.

Northern Advocate, 7 March 1945, Page 2

The Northern Advocate "NORTHLAND FIRST" Registered for transmission through the Post as a Newspaper. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7, 1945. CHILD WELFARE.

ENLIGHTENMENT as to the ramifications of the Child Welfare 4 Branch of the Education Department was given by Mr. L. G. Anderson when he addressed the Rotary Club yesterday. Mr. Anderson has been child welfare officer at Whangarei during the past two years, and is about to proceed on promotion to head office at Wellington. His comments upon the operations of the Child Welfare Department in Northland are therefore of general interest and importance. The scattered nature of settlement in portions of Northland, particularly in the most northern areas, constitutes at once a clamant call for service in the interests of children whose lines have not fallen in pleasant places, and a challenge to officers charged with the duty of carrying to the children the service the State desires to render. The problem of reaching children in isolated settlements, especially where there is prhaps understandable reluctance on the part of parents or guardians to give publicity to infirmity, of body or mind, is one which confronts every social worker, whether paid or honorary official. This difficulty is met by child welfare officers, who have to break down the impression, erroneously formed, that the department is “chasing round for children to put them in institutions,” a frequently used sentiment on the part of the uninformed; it unnecessarily hampers what is a beneficent organisation.

Mr. Anderson emphasised that placing children in institutions is the. last resort of the department, whose officers make every effort to provide normal home life for children who, by orphanhood or misfortune, require the care and assistance of the State. If it is possible, by means of State help, to enable a family to.remain together, to the welfare of all the members, that course is taken. If, however, such an arrangement is impossible, children are placed with families able to satisfy the department that they can undertake the responsibility with resultant comfort and care for the State wards.

Paternal interest is taken in these wards, the homes in which they are placed being frequently visited. Hosts and guests are encouraged to keep in touch with welfare officers, and it is gratifying to hear that in the great majority of cases there grows up a family relationship between children and their guardians. Indeed, it is noteworthy that in many instances,' especially where infants have been placed with families, legal adoption has followed. If it should unfortunately happen that a child requiring State, guardianship cannot be placed with a family, or if he or she should be retarded intellectually, one of several institutions is available. These institutions are in charge of people qualified by training and disposition to help the inmates. The Child Welfare Department, however, believes that institutional treatment of children should not be resorted to if it can possibly be avoided, In this respect it is acting upon the lines adopted by Dr. Barnardo and other philanthropists, who discarded the institution for the cottage home, in which orphans and other children become one family under the guidance of a motherly matron. It is well that the people of New Zealand should be made aware of this aim of the Child Welfare Department, and that there should be removed the idea that “wards of the State are young folk who have been guilty of misdemeanours. Nothing could be further from the truth in all but very few cases. So far as Northland is concerned, peculiar problems are presented. That affecting young Maoris is not the least pressing. Maori boys make good scholars at the schools provided in the Far North, but, when schooldays are over, and boys find themselves at a loose end,* with lack of recreational facilities and lack of employment, they are open to the (temptations which come to all youths at that period of life if they have no useful or interesting occupation. To overcome these difficulties and to encourage the young Maori to aim at. preparing himself for a useful future is a task to which the Child Welfare Department is addressing itself, and in the solution of which it seeks the co-operation of Maori and pakeha alike; it is a community problem calling for community goodwill and assistance.