Foster-children

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 894, 21 September 1956, Page 6

Foster-children

URS is a relatively small community, and in many ways this gives us definite advantages. We can develop services of one kind and another, that although fairly complex, are still not large enough to become unwieldy and which can preserve an individuality, flexibility and humanity. Such a_service-a Government Service-is the Child Welfare Division, attached to the Department of Education, Its activities and concerns are with human beings, mostly young ones-children from the day of their birth, children whose homes are shattered and who are at the mercy of their environment, children who steal and appear in court, children whose behaviour against their family, their school, or their neighbours becomes so different from that of others that it singles them out for notice, These are some of the situations that bring children under the care of the Child Welfare Division. The Division’s activities fall into two classes. There is the work of restoration and the work of reformation. In the first group are children who, through no fault of their own, have been deprived of the affection, understanding and care they would normally receive. These include illegitimate children, children who have been cruelly treated, children whose parents have separated and abandoned them, or a child whose mother may be in a mental hospital. On the other hand, there are children who are difficult, who may eventually become delinquents, and the range of difficulties these present to Child Welfare Officers is infinite. In practice these two activities of the Division tend to merge into each other, as many delinquent children have never had a normal home life. A documentary picture of the whole of the Child Welfare Service and the institutions which have been built up to serve its needs will be broadcast in the Main National programme on Sunday, ‘September 30, at 9.30 p.m. In the over-all picture of the organisation, many different types of welfare work are presented, and even these are only a small fraction of the great variety possible. "Each part of New Zealand has its different problems," C. E. Peek, Superintendent of Child Welfare, told The Listener. "An area of rapid expansion with hydro-electric schemes or afforestation projects will present different problems to a worker than will a Manawatu sheep farming area. An area of rapid expansion will have transient people with a lack of solidity about their background-quite a different proposition from the relatively static background of the city worker." To see something of this "relatively static background," The Listener recently accompanied a woman Child Welfare Officer on her weekly visiting day to the area coming under her care in the city of Wellington. This Officer had many children on her "call list’--she looks after boys up to the age of ten and girls until they no longer need the assistance of the Department. Her main concern is in trying to see that the children she visits are in a warm, human environment, where the strains, confusions, and injuries can be given the best chance to heal, and where the child can gradually resume his own life. (continued on next page)

(continued from previaus page) The first call was to see a seven-year-old bey and his foster-mother. The boy had heen badly treated by, his natural parents, but in his new home had made excellent progress. The Division believes that if a child cannot be brought up by his own parents then the next best thing is to live in somebody else’s home under reasonably natural conditions, Last year there were over 2000 State wards living in foster-homes. "In a good foster-home the child soon adapts himself to his new family, becomes an accepted member of it, and within the daily security and warmth of normal family relationships is likely to develop naturally into a person with his own sense of worth in home, school | and community, Institutional care, necessary as it is in some cases, cannot pro--vide this intimate relationship," says the Diyision’s Annual Report. The qualities necessary to be a good foster-parent are those which, ‘in the main, are found in all good parents. One of the important things is that "they should be able to accept a child for what he is and not expect him to reach | perfection in a week or even in a lifetime." In the home we visited there was no doubt of the warmth of the greeting. The children, there was another child also in the home, heard the car coming, shouted "Here’s the lady!" and in a flash had raced down to meet her. She was a familiar visitor to the home, where she is regarded as a family friend and shares the privileges of other, friends such as sending birthday presents, and visiting in hospital when the child is sick. On a visit such as this she may arrange for the purchasing of new clothes, or for a visit to a doctor or to the speech clinic: The boy in his new home was lively and happy. "Mind you, we’ve had our difficulties," said his foster-mother, and to an experienced observer such as the Welfare Officer there were still signs of the experiences | the child had been through, Children such as this, often remain in a fosterhome for many years, and grow up as a member of the family, Eventually they may rejoin their natural parents, and although this will be felt as a loss

by the foster-parents, the years he has spent with them will help him for the rest of his life. At the next home we visited the child was being boarded out. A situation such as this may arise when the parents are separated and the mother becomes ill. The child may go to live with friends who have to notify the Welfare Division of the new arrangements. The Officer then visits from time to time to see that everything is satisfactory. In this home, where there were several other children, the Officer. had a vociferous welcome, and again there was no doubt of the happiness of the child. he third visit was of a different kind, as the family were under what is

called "preventive supervision." "Families under ‘preventive supervision’ are folk who, through some lack, aren’t as happily situated as everybody else," said the Officer. It may be lack of money, lack of intelligence, or there may be marital problems or bad housing conditions. Legally we have no right to intervene in such a situation, and. any help we are able to give depends wholly on the goodwill of the family." The chain of events starting a family coming under "preventive supervision" may be an accident to the husband at work. After a period off-work he starts drinking and the home conditions begin to deteriorate. The next-door neighbour may notice the children’s raggedness and get in touch with the Child Welfare Department, Once things are geing smoothly the visiting Officer can give all kinds of help, from arranging a suitable menu to providing for financial loans. Occasionally they will strike trouble, as an Officer who was threatened with being thrown over the banisters told us, but more usually after the initial suspicion has passed a.great deal can be done. Sometimes cases of "preventive supervision" will land an Officer in a strange position. There was the time when an Officer had two cases in the same house, with both families using the same front door. "When I visited them I was never sure which family would answer the door, so I had to be prepared to deal with either," she told us. "It turned out later on that one of these families’ was the tenant and the other the landlord, and I was rather afraid that if the landlord discovered his tenant was also ‘under the Welfare’ he might evict him." When children first come under the care of the Division they usually spend some time at a receiving home. This is often a settling down period while they are awaiting foster-homes or adoption. In Wellington this. is at Miramar, An old wooden house, now modernised, its interior resembles a boarding school, with neat. dormitories, play rooms, single 4 = ee -----e

rooms for older children and a huge kitchen, The Welfare Officer discussed some new arrivals with the Matron, and we saw an older girl looking after a very young illegitimate baby, who was: awaiting adoption. The day ended with calls to a local headmaster and to. the Child Health Clinic, Teachers are often the first tonotice something amiss with a child, and many valuable leads come from them. At the Health Clinic a team of doctors and psychiatrists is on hand to help unravel the more complicated problems. On the whole, the children enjoy, going, as it makes them feel rather important. Inside, the staff will make a fuss of them and try to dispel any exagegerated fears the children may haye. A correct diagnosis and treatment may save endless suffering later. And so this "relatively static’ day ended. The next day may start, as one actually did, with a fortnight-old baby due for a feed in half an hour being left in the Child Welfare Office. "In Child Welfare work, no one.would ever get bored by haying to do the same work ever again-there’s no possibility of that," said Mr. Peek. The attitude of mind which lies behind the work of these Officers may be illustrated by a quotation from a book by an English specialist worker with maladjusted children, C. L. C. Burns. "The need for undertsanding, tolerance and tenderness is a desperate one in our days; we cannot afford, any of us, to have rigid, puritanical, or punitive ideas with regard to human relationships . . . there is danger in that kind of cold ‘charity’ which finds it necessary to force children to be goed, to be obedient, go be religious: with no real understanding, no warmth, no sympathy." The issues at stake are not only the lives of individual children but the welfare of our society as a whole. -(In our next issue, a second article will deal with ways in which the Division tries to help children. who have come into conflict with the law or who need more detailed remedial treatment.) ~~