THE HOME OF HEALTHY, HAPPY CHILDREN

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3846, 16 December 1936, Page 17 (Supplement)

THE HOME OF HEALTHY, HAPPY CHILDREN

Young New Zealand Reaches Another Christmas.

If a country can boast the lowest rate of infant mortality in the world, it should be able to say its children are the happiest and best-cared for. There is every encouragement for New Zealand children to grow up to be the strongest and finest people in the world. Fully half of them live in the country, which means life out of doors in long days of sunshine and an equable climate throughout the year. Moreover, in New Zealand there is a comparative absence of large industrial undertakings and, therefore, little overcrowding in the cities; city children are offered every opportunity to live as healthv as their country cousins. The Plunket and Sir Truby King Karitane systems lead the world in infant welfare, and in the cities free kindergartens carry on where Plunket oversight ends. Every child between the ag&s of seven and fourteen is required to enrol as a pupil of either a public or registered school, and a correspondence school arranges classes for remote country children, including those of shepherds and light-house-keepers, for whom the usual educational facilities are not available. There are schools for the, deaf and dumb, the Blind Institute at Auckland doing some remarkable work for the sightless, while special classes are established at the main centres for the education of hard-of-hearing children. A School Medicine Service does much to ensure! the health of New Zealand’s fujture manhood and womanhood. It is recognised that medical treatment must be available for every child in need of it, and the School Medical Service aims at securing for each child three complete examinations during his school life; but special examinations are carried out when parents, teachers, or the school medical officers consider them necessary.

As preventative measures in dealing with malnutrition among schoolchildren, special attention has been given to the extension of two activities—supply of milk ration and health camps. These latter have been found invaluable in dealing with disease at the only stage at which it can hope be be 100 pel' cent, effective —before it is firmly established. They have one object—to help back to health in body and temperament, by means of fresh air, sunlight, good food and regular habits, those children, who, by recent illne-ss or faulty environment, cannot otherwise regain their health. A considerable amount of work is 1 done in co-operation with the Education Department, and blSo with the

Mental Hospitals Department, in regard to children suspected of mental backwardness or defect. By this _ means it is determined whether spe- | cial provision for their welfare, either educational or institutional, is needed. Dental clinics throughout the country care for the teeth of children of from two years to fourteen, and a travellingservice is provided for “backblocks” children. The School Medical Service works in close co-operation with the Child Welfare Branch of the Education Department, under the supervision of which are all measures for the protection of destitute and neglected children, also regulations governing juvenile employment. It also co-operates with the officers of the Education De-

partment in the. supervision of school buildings and sanitation. Children’s courts, administered with a sympathetic understanding of childnature, do much" to arrest delinquency among children. There is a surprising number - of cases, however, for so small a country. Infant life protection is carried out under the supervision of trained nurses who are fully qualified in the care and feeding of infants and youngchildren. New Zealand offers every opportunity for her people to be the healthiest and happiest in the- world, and it is a glad fact that her children will, in time, realise that ideal if the present standard of progress is maintain-