Plunket launches annual appeal
The Plunket Society is holding its annual appeal on Saturday 19 October. Money raised in the Waimarino district is used to keep up the high standard of Plunket care that mothers and children have received for 75 years. Last year Ohakune and Raetihi contributed a little over $400 each to the appeal, a long way short of the $5,201 spent in 1984 to keep this child health and development service functioning. Government policies support Plunket as an essential child care service and will continue to do so when the new Wanganui area health board comes into operation. But in small communities such as the Waimarino, mothers with young babies shoulder the responsibility of keeping a Plunket nurse on the road. They are the ones who bake cakes, cater at large functions. organise "giant fun runs" and vvork for every available dollar. How does the Plunket nurse spend her time? A registered general and obstetric nurse with specialist training in child and baby care. the Plunket nurse calls on new babies at home for the first six weeks and then s-xs children regularly until school age.
Her main role is to offer support and to check and maintain good health for children and their families. Mrs Dorothy Scarrow, the Waimarino's Plunket nurse for many years before her retirement two years ago, received well over 350 calls in her last year for advice or assistance. Even last year, when the nurse was only semi-resident, over 100 calls were logged. Mrs Carol Harford, who is finishing her Plunket training in Palmerston North, will be the Waimarino's full-time nurse in the new year. She will spend her time helping to allay mothers' fears and anxieties about their own self-esteem, coping and parental ability, and helping when it all gets too much. She has the back-up of a community Karitane nurse who can help mothers in their homes. The Royal New Zealand Plunket Society was started in 1907 as a mothercraft movement by Frederic Truby King, who felt that the fundamental laws of nutrition, growth and reproduction applied to all living things and that educating parents would lead to better child health. Within five years of its founding, the Plunket Society, using Dr King's ideas, had reduced the infant death rate to one per thousand live births in Dunedin.
The concept has spread throughout New Zealand. Today, Plunket 's thousands of volunteers still respond to the basic aims and objectives of Truby King's raliying call.
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Waimarino Bulletin, Volume 3, Issue 17, 17 September 1985, Page 4
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414Plunket launches annual appeal Waimarino Bulletin, Volume 3, Issue 17, 17 September 1985, Page 4
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