HOME NURSING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 June 1943, Page 4

HOME NURSING

and domestic assistance. GOVERNMENT INTENTIONS. (Bv Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. The intention of the Government to institute a Home Nursing Service and a Domestic Aid Service at the first available opportunity was announced by the Minister of Health, Mr Nordmeyer, during the Financial Debate in the House of Representatives last night. He said the Government proposed, at the request of the Plunket Society and other organisations, to convene shortly a conference of those interested with a view to meeting the very great need in the community in regard to domestic help in the home. The Minister recalled that the Government had promised, on the introduction of social security, that as soon as a sufficient number of nurses could be trained, it would institute a Home Nursing Service. Hospital aids were to be specially trained for that work. Unfortunately, the war had prevented the commencement of this scheme. As soon as the nurses returned from the war the Government would begin its home nursing service.

Along with a home nursing service, said the Minister, there must be a home domestic help scheme, and that had been envisaged at the same time. The committee on maternity services had gone into this question, and in its report emphasised the need for a corps of domestic aids. The committee had also pointed out that the paucity of domestic assistance was due in a measure to the attitude of employers and the community generally to the domestic servant. If a domestic aid service was to be started, it was essential to elevate the status of the domestic servant. For too loflg the domestic servant had been regarded as an inferior and treated as a slave.

The Minister said that he felt sure that many of the girls today in the armed forces would be only too ready to come into a proper domestic aid service after the war, and the Government was determined that something along those lines must be done.