Royal NZ Plunket Society: Annalee Haywood 

Annalee, who has worked for Plunket for nearly 10 years is one of six team leaders who make up the Community Support Programmes team. The other team major part of Plunket is the Clinical team who look after the growth and development of babies through "Well Child Checks" from birth to the age of 5 yrs, making 10 visits in total up till the child goes to school.

The total staff in Auckland, involved in this, is nearly 300 full and part timers. To give you an idea of scale they have over 800 cars nationally enabling the nurses to get out to their patients.

The Community Support team is widely diversified simply because of the wide ethnic make up of Auckland. For an example they have a Chinese coffee group meeting in Botany which has a large number of grand parents attending, as grand parent involvement is very strong in the Asian communities. There are First Time parent groups, parent education and support groups, coffee groups and of course the Baby Seat programme in place to ensure no one is missing access to information or support especially in the early developmental stages of life.

A recent change in the Plunket programmes locally has been the re-tasking of the building Wharf Rd Buckland's Beach. This was formally for the Car Seat programme but as this has down sized it is now the base for a number of the programmes previously mentioned.

Annalee's team is responsible for an area from the central city through the Eastern Bays out as far as Maraetai, Whitford and Manurewa.

They are also active with the Police in car seat advocacy where patrols and road checks are made on vehicles to ensure car seats are correctly used and fitted.

Plunket is entirely run on donations which is why we have chosen them as our Masthead charity for this year's regatta. Please look out also for there "Give a bundle" web site /page.    

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