Child Care in N.Z.

Preschool facilities for children in New Zealand fall into two broad categories. First, there are Preschool centres, including free kindergartens, federated play centres, and other play centres and kindergartens. Then there are Day-care centres, including day nurseries (about 40% of which are situated in private homes, where a housewife offers day care to children), day and residential nurseries, university and training college nurseries, and factory nurseries.

In June 1970, there were 1,027 preschool centres in New Zealand, and 120 day-care centres. While there are a relatively large number of play centres and kindergartens, these presuppose a family situation where there are two parents, and the mother is at home during the day. These organisations consider themselves to have a primarily educational function, and do not in any way make provision for children of a working solo parent, or of two parents who both work. These children are thus limited to using day care centres where they are available, and making other arrangements where they are not. In June 1970, there were just over 2,000 places in registered day care centres, and an estimated 28,000—34,000 pre-school children of married women — more still if the children of working solo parents are included.

What happens to the remaining 26,000— 32,000 children, whose mothers work, but who are not in registered day care? A survey carried out by the Society for Research on Women indicates that relatives, friends and neighbours are chiefly responsible for looking after these children. Such arrangements are often makeshift and far from satisfactory, a strain on the families involved, and have adverse effects of the security and development of the children.

In 1964, the New Zealand Association of Child Care Centres was established. One of the main tasks of the association has been to establish a recognised training course for the supervisors of day care centres. While membership of the association is voluntary, quite a large proportion of existing centres do belong, and share a basic concern for the social, emotional and intellectual needs of children, as well as meeting the physical requirements which are the chief official concern.

Regulations covering day care centres do require that the programmes for children reach a certain standard in terms of child development, "in order that the educational and social development obtained in pre-school centres by other children is not altogether denied to the children of working mothers". However, there is an obvious anomaly in the situation where the children of well-off parents with a stable family situation have free government assisted preschool education made readily available to them, while the children whose parents work through choice or necessity, and who are likely to be less privileged anyway, are denied any government assistance whatsoever, and have an educational programme dependent entirely on the ability or whim of the supervisor. (While a training course exists it is not compulsory; a centre with a trained supervisor, a qualified teacher, or a registered nurse gets an 'A' licence; a centre whose supervisor is simply a 'suitable' person gets a 'B' licence.)

Sonja Davies, President of the New Zealand Association of Child Care Centres, said in her annual report: "Just as in our society it is unusual for children to suffer starvation or physical deprivation, but only too common for them to live in surroundings that are intellectually or emotionally deficient, so too, it is unusual today to find child care centres, that do not conform to the physical requirements of the regulations, but still too possible to find some where children are not offered the variety of experience necessary for their full development.

So long as it is possible for people with no qualifications whatsoever to open centres— and for no real effort to be made by them to become qualified, then just so long we shall not get child care in proper perspective.'

*Based on The Working Mother and Child-Care, Labour and Employment Gazette, Vol. XXI, No.3 August 1971