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41
HEALTH EDUCATION AND HOME SAFETY
Miss D. S. Elliott, S.R.N., H. V. Cert., Dip. H. E.
Health Education Officer
"If you are planning for a year - grow rice. If you are planning
for ten years-grow trees. If you are planning for a hundred
years - educate the people. "
Chinese Proverb.
Home Safety activities were amalgamated with the Health
Education Section during the year, following the retirement of
Miss D. E. Black more, Home Safety Officer. Although legislation
with regard to housing, domestic articles and appliances is effective
it was felt that the greatest emphasis in the prevention
of accidents in the home should be on education and the encouragement
of a sense of personal responsibility.
Health education, as all education, should be more than just
a means of satisfying immediate needs and reducing new knowledge
to simple terms. Like the yeast in dough it becomes real and
alive to those participating in group activities and is concerned
firstly with attitudes towards personal and community
mental and physical health, secondly with a critical examination
of the facts presented and thirdly as a result of the first two,
with encouraging voluntary individual or group action. "A great
oxford teacher, Walter Raleigh, used to say to his students,
Don't look at me; look where I am looking.' "
Group Activities
The educational work in mothercraft classes, parents' clubs
and toddlers' clubs has continued and matured during the year.
Three toddlers' clubs are now well established and plans are
being made to put another six into operation during 1963. In all
these groups the sincerity and genuine care of the leaders for
their members is building up a good relationship which is
noticeably extending, so that members of the groups now matter
to each other. In some parents' clubs, in particular, this influence
has spread beyond the clubs into the members' everyday
lives. New and particularly shy members are not only made welcome
in the groups but are deliberately invited to the frequent
tea and coffee parties in each others homes. Several members
helped another in the home when a new baby was born, some of
them acted as baby sitters for each other and one offered to
have a child for a week to enable the mother to take a much
needed holiday. A very anxious and depressed mother of a subnormal
child was quite dramatically helped by the friendliness
of & group.