SOCIAL WELFARE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 April 1939, Page 8

SOCIAL WELFARE

QUESTIONS BEFORE LABOUR CONFERENCE HEALTH AND EDUCATION. PROPOSALS APPROVED & REJECTED. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. Many aspects of the health and education systems were touched on in remits before lire annual conference of the New Zealand Labour Party in Wellington yesterday, and on which the committee of education and health, of which the Minister of Education and Health, Mr Fraser, was chairman, reported. A request that the Government be asked to institute an inquiry into the administration of the Child Welfare Department with particular reference to (a) the advisability of appointing an honorary board of child welfarein each of the four centres, and (b) the present method of boarding out children, was contained in one remit. Reporting on the question, the committee stated that a review and overhaul of certain activities of the child welfare branch of the Education Department was in operation with a view to very considerable improvements. The-boarding-out system was to be closely examined. The resolution, therefore, had been anticipated. The committee’s recommendation was adopted. SCHOOL LEAVING AGE. The following suggestions were approved and forwarded to the Government for favourable consideration: The abolition of corporal punishment; the raising of the school leaving age to 15 years: the institution of a course of training in kindergarten work at all training colleges; the-teaching of disease preventive methods in all schools and adult education classes. On the recommendation of the committee the following proposals were not adopted: The provision of vocational 1 training for all children over the age of 12 years; a more liberal scale of payment for training college students; that Plunket work and kindergartens be State institutions; that the Maori language bo taught in all schools. The committee considered that any such propaganda as that envisaged in a remit advocating the teaching of Socialist philosophy in schools would violate fundamental educational principles. A proposal for the teaching of sex hygiene and first aid in all schools, the committee said, was to be embodied as far as practicable in health and hygiene instruction. PROPAGANDA OPPOSED. The inclusion in the curriculum of social and political economy was advocated in another remit. This, the committee reported was provided for now in civics and would have adequate treatment in future courses and text books. But though the committee favoured comprehensive treatment of the subject, it was opposed to any type of propaganda in the school. A further remit urged the abolition of Bible-in-school teaching. The com-mittee-reported that it felt it would be highly undesirable to raise this issue into one of first-class importance, snd recommended the conference to leave the question of improving and safeguarding the free, secular ano compulsory education system in the hands of the Parliamentary Labour Party. The recommendations of the committee on these points were adopted. Also on the recommendation of the committee, conference decided that a proposal concerning the necessity for the appointment of additional official visitors to mental hospitals be referred to the Minister of Health for favourable consideration in reasonable relation to requirements. RACIAL EUGENICS. A proposal for a report regarding the necessity for the sterilisation of the unfit was rejected on the strong recommendation of the committee. Similar action was taken on requests for the establishment of racial eugenics) clinics at St Helens hospitals, and for (he establishment of clinics for advice on birth control to women with mental or physical disabilities. A request for an investigation into working conditions of nursing trainees in public hospitals was approved and referred to the Minister of Health for favourable consideration. The committee staled that the wages of nurses and other hospital employees had beenlargely increased and hours of work considerably reduced since the Labour Government assumed office. On a proposal for an investigation into the incidence of venereal disease, the committee reported that this question was being dealt with in ordinary clinical work. The committee was not convinced that any special investigation was necessary, as the Health Department was fully alive to the necessity for keeping the problem constantly under supervision and was considering the advisability of taking further steps in control and curative treatment. Proposals for the stricter enforcement of health regulations in hotels, restaurants and milk bars, and for general education in the prevention of general education in the, prevention of nutritional and other diseases were approved. training of housekeepers. A scheme for the training of housekeepers and the utilisation of theii seiviccs to assist ailing mothers, and ethers in need of such help, the committee reported, had been considered by the Government from all angles. Legislation would probably be introduced next session providing for two years’ training of girls in smaller hospitals who would then be available as nursing and domestic aids. The Government is to bo asked to consider the advisability of legislatively empowering all ■ appropriate local bodies to institute municipal milk supplies. A suggestion to the Government that an inquiry be held- into the whole fieli of advertising, with particular reference to (a) whether the cost to the community was excessive, having regard to tiie services rendered: (b) to wiial extent fraudulent and extravagant claims were made and accepted as genuine by the public, was rejected, the committee .giving as its ground for this recommendation the great difficulty of dealing with the suggestion. The question whether, in the case of patent medicines, it was desirable that remedies should be submitted to a committee, as was done with . stock remedies, and whether advertising of. alleged cures for maladies for which I

medicinal science knew no cure should be prohibited, was recommended for inquiry. A remit directing the attention of the Government to the urgent necessity for (a) a more severe censorship of the low class American films which were being shown in the Dominion, and that in future only films which did not affront intelligence and good taste be permitted; and (b) the appointment of a children's film council with not fewer than two women members, was referred to the Minister of Internal Affairs, Mr Perry, for protecting children further from inimical influences associated with certain films. I 4