1960s booklet given to parents by Plunket, to record baby's health and progress
The Royal New Zealand Plunket Trust provides a range of free services aimed at improving the development, health and wellbeing of children under the age of five within New Zealand, where it is commonly known simply as Plunket. Its mission is "to ensure that New Zealand children are among the healthiest in the world". Much of Plunket's work is organised by volunteers.[1]
It was an incorporated society named the Royal New Zealand Plunket Society until 1 January 2018, when it became a charitable trust under the Charitable Trusts Act 1957.
History
MP Hilda Ross (left) and Mrs Gilmer, president of the Plunket Society, at the opening of the 1950 Karitane Fair, Wellington
In 1905 Plunket had its beginnings in Seacliff, a small village on the Coast Road north of Dunedin. Truby King, then superintendent of Seacliff Asylum, began studying paediatrics and child welfare began when his adopted baby daughter Mary was making no progress. He devised a milk-based formula which led her to thrive. He formed the belief that by providing support services to parents, the society could ensure children were fed on a nutritious diet, reducing child mortality rates. He also believed that this would improve adult health as the children got older.
King subsequently trained Joanna McKinnon in his methods of baby care and she went out into the Seacliff community to support local mothers. Towards the end of 1905 McKinnon moved to Dunedin to spread the word. By the end of three months she had 50 babies under her daily care. Help was needed and King recruited and trained nurse O'Shea to assist her. Demand for their services continued to grow and by the end of 1906 they were stretched to the limit. All expenses for this undertaking, including training and salaries for the two nurses were paid for by King.
At the same time in 1906, two respected Kāi Tahu and Kāti Huirapa midwives and healers, Mere Harper and Ria Tikini, delivered Thomas Rangiwahia Mutu Ellison. His older brother had died as a baby, so when Thomas also became ill the midwives brought him to Mere's friend Truby King. Thomas thrived under their combined care, and the Karitāne Home for Babies opened within a year.[2] Although these women were "integral to Plunket's establishment", they were not included in the histories of Plunket published in 1982 and 2007, which the organisation recitified in 2020.[3]
King held the meeting which led to the founding of the society on 14 May 1907, in Dunedin, with the motivation to 'help the mothers and save the babies'.[4] A committee was formed, made up mostly of those people who had supported and helped McKinnon during the past two years. King also used the extensive networks established by Mere Harper and Ria Tikini, as well as their decades of experience and the traditional knowledge they held, to develop the society.[5]
Lady Victoria Plunket, mother of eight and wife of then Governor of New Zealand, William Plunket, 5th Baron Plunket,[6][7] had met King in 1905, and became a patron soon after the society's foundation. Hers was the idea to train nurses and create a professional nursing service. She travelled around New Zealand even while herself five months pregnant to gather support and encourage the formation of branches. Nine were formed by the time she returned to England in 1910. Her vision was to link these branches in one organisation based in Dunedin which would hold an annual conference.[8] Centres in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch were used both for the babies that were failing to flourish, and for training camps for the nurses.[4]
At the society's first annual conference, it adopted the name the Society for the Health of Women and Children. In 1914, it officially became the Plunket Society in recognition of its patron.[8] The society gained royal recognition and the prefix Royal in 1915.[9]
In 1912, King made a lecture tour on the Plunket Society. In these tours he was highly successful in attracting support for the society, partly because he exaggerated the effect on infant mortality rates.[7] As a result of his tour, 60 new centres opened around New Zealand, each employing a nurse. The centres were badged as Plunket Rooms, however they are now referred to as Plunket Clinics. King published several manuals, among them Feeding and Care of Baby (1913), and The Expectant Mother and Baby's First Months (1916). This latter publication was given to every applicant for a marriage licence.[6]
Mothers were even given practices to inform them of domestic hygiene and mothercraft that were based on King's ideology. They included the regularity of feeding, eating and bowel habits.[4] In New Zealand the Plunket philosophy became 'parenting lore' and within three decades New Zealand had the lowest infant mortality rate in the world.
However the society laboured for many years under the false perception that it was set up to cater only for European women and their babies; this impression was reinforced by the fact that the Department of Health operated a Native Health Nurse Service specifically for Māori in rural areas.[7]
Plunket today
Many changes have been made to Plunket teaching and organisation over the years. The initial strict parenting regimes have given way to more flexible care and support, and Karitane Hospitals were replaced in the 1970s with Plunket Karitane family centres. 1981 saw the introduction of a car seat rental scheme, and in 1994 a telephone advice service, PlunketLine, was inaugurated. Special training schemes have been initiated for Māori Health Workers to give culturally appropriate guidance where necessary, and Plunket is also seeing an increase in the number of Pacific Island families enrolling.[6]
Today, there are hundreds of centres across New Zealand.
In 2020, Plunket rebranded its logo to better acknowledge its founding Māori midwives Mere Harper and Ria Tikini, and to indicate that it wants to better meet the needs of Māori.[10]
Related Research Articles
The small town of Karitane is located within the limits of the city of Dunedin in New Zealand, 35 kilometres to the north of the city centre.
The following lists events that happened during 1907 in New Zealand.
Alice Mary Bush was a pioneering New Zealand female physician, paediatrician and activist for family planning services and abortion access.
Sir Frederic Truby King, generally known as Truby King, was a New Zealand health reformer and Director of Child Welfare. He is best known as the founder of the Plunket Society.
Seacliff is a small village located north of Dunedin in the Otago region of New Zealand's South Island. The village lies roughly halfway between the estuary of Blueskin Bay and the mouth of the Waikouaiti River at Karitane, on the eastern slopes of Kilmog hill. Coast Road, an old route north from Dunedin, and the South Island Main Trunk Railway pass through the village.
The Canadian Mothercraft Society (Mothercraft) is a non-profit, charitable NGO that serves children ages 0 to 6, their families, their teachers, and their community.
Seacliff Lunatic Asylum was a psychiatric hospital in Seacliff, New Zealand. When built in the late 19th century, it was the largest building in the country, noted for its scale and extravagant architecture. It became infamous for construction faults resulting in partial collapse, as well as a 1942 fire which destroyed a wooden outbuilding, claiming 37 lives, because the victims were trapped in a locked ward.
Alice Hannah Holford was a New Zealand nurse, midwife and hospital matron.
Hanorah Philomena FitzGibbon MBE was a New Zealand civilian and military nurse, hospital matron and nursing administrator.
Muriel Helen Deem was a New Zealand medical doctor, medical officer, Plunket medical adviser and university lecturer.
A midwife is a health professional who cares for mothers and newborns around childbirth, a specialization known as midwifery.
Sir Neil Colquhoun Begg was a New Zealand paediatrician, historian and cricketer. He played three first-class matches for the Otago cricket team after the beginning of World War II, but he is most noted as a paediatrician and an historian. He served as director of medical services for the Plunket Society from 1956 to 1977, and, with his brother Charles, wrote four books on the history of Fiordland. He chaired the New Zealand Historic Places Trust between 1978 and 1986.
The 1948 King's Birthday Honours in New Zealand, celebrating the official birthday of King George VI, were appointments made by the King on the advice of the New Zealand government to various orders and honours to reward and highlight good works by New Zealanders. They were announced on 10 June 1948.
The Karitane Hospitals were six hospitals in New Zealand run by the Plunket Society, located in Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin, Invercargill, Wanganui and Wellington. They were established as training hospitals for Karitane nurses and cared for babies with malnutrition and other dietetic complaints, and premature babies. They also offered mother care training and assistance. The first hospital opened in 1907 and the hospitals were closed between 1978 and 1980 due to financial difficulties and changes in society and maternity services.
Huriawa, commonly known as Huriawa Peninsula or Karitane Peninsula, is a headland on the coast of Otago, New Zealand. It is located 35 kilometres north of Dunedin city centre, immediately to the southeast of the settlement of Karitane.
Mere (Mary) Harper, born Mary Apes / Mere Hipi and also known as Big Mary or Mere Hapa was a porter, cultural informant, and midwife of Kāi Tahu and Kāti Huirapa descent. She was the main informant for ethnographer William Anderson Taylor's work on Kāi Tahu history, and is credited as one of the midwives who paved the way for the creation of the Plunket Society of New Zealand.
Ria Tikini or Ria Te Kini, also known as Mrs Chicken, was a New Zealand businesswoman, cultural informant and midwife. She is credited as one of the midwives who paved the way for the creation of the Plunket Society. As a Kāi Tahu and Kāti Mamoe woman, she was an informant for ethnographer William Anderson Taylor's work on Kāi Tahu history and early European contact with Māori.
The St Helens Hospitals were maternity hospitals located in seven New Zealand cities. They were the first state-run maternity hospitals in the world offering both midwifery services and midwifery training. The first hospital opened in 1905 in Wellington and the last one in Wanganui in 1921. The services of the St Helens Hospitals were gradually incorporated into other hospitals and the last hospital to close was in Auckland in 1990.
The Mothercraft Training Society was an organization in the United Kingdom which trained expectant and new mothers, nurses, midwives, and health visitors in 'mothercraft', with the aim of bringing down infant mortality. Briefly known as the Babies of the Empire Society, before taking on its new name, it established its own infant welfare clinic, with a dietetic hospital, and ran a year-long training course from which students emerged as qualified nursery nurses.
Victoria Alexandrina Muriel May, Baroness Plunket was a nursing association founder and vicereine.
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