Doctor
Margaret ("Peg") Belson MBE, BA Syd PhD (Hon) was a British health care campaigner who made voluntary
contributions over 60 years, in the UK and abroad, in the field of
children’s welfare in hospitals, including the establishment of the
Action for Sick Children Association died she was 90..
[1]
(1921-2012)
Early Life and family
Margaret Belson (née Harris) was born in England in 1921 before
emigrating to Australia at an early age, where she qualified as a
teacher. She met her husband, William Belson, during the Second World
War and they moved to London in 1951. Their first child, Jane, was born
that year, followed by Louise, Ross and Bruce.
Inspiration
In 1959 the UK's Ministry of Health published the Platt Report
requiring hospitals to implement major changes in the non-medical care
of children in hospital. It made 54 recommendations, the most
significant being that visiting to all children should be unrestricted,
that mothers should be able to stay with young children and that the
training of medical and nursing staff should include the emotional and
social needs of children and families. Since 1952, through his
contrasting documentary films,
A Two Year Old Goes to Hospital and
Going to Hospital With Mother James Robertson,
a psychiatric social worker from the Tavistock Institute of Human
Relations, had been promoting such a pattern of care to doctors and
nurses with only limited success. Nor was the Ministry any more
successful in gaining a more humane pattern of care for sick children.
At that time children faced long, lonely stays in hospital. Visiting
hours were very short, sometimes as little as an hour twice a week and
for some conditions non-existent. Parents were discouraged from
visiting. It was thought they might bring infection into the ward and
“their visits evidently upset the children who, if left to themselves,
would quickly settle down and soon forget about home”. At that time a
health correspondent could confidently state that “the vast majority of
hospitals seemed oblivious to the enormous amount of suffering they put
upon children and their parents by rules which break important
relationships necessary for the maintenance of good mental health”. In
1961 James Robertson brought the Platt recommendations to public notice
with a series of articles in the Observer and a forthright programme on
BBC TV based on his films. Contrary to instructions he asked viewers to
write to him about what happened when their children were in hospital
and urged community action to improve conditions for sick children.
Early work
Peg Belson was one of the Battersea mothers who heeded his call and
under his guidance set up a group, initially called Mother Care for
Children in Hospital, which in 1965 changed to NAWCH – the National
Association for the Welfare of Children in Hospital. Within a few short
years NAWCH was a UK-wide organisation with over fifty branches, a
Central Office and a Government grant. During the past 50 years going
into hospital for children has changed beyond recognition. In the main
children are cared for by qualified staff on children’s wards where
parents are welcome at any time, sleep near their child and take part in
their care, hospital play specialists help to make the experience more
meaningful and endurable and wards are bright and suitably decorated.
With her colleagues Peg Belson played a significant role in helping to
bring about these changes. She was a committee member and office-bearer
in NAWCH (now Action for Sick Children), a member of official enquiries
and represented Action for Sick Children on other national
organisations. As a lecturer and writer and as a health authority member
she was able to persuade others to take up the cause. She carried out
many national surveys of hospital facilities for children, which gained
wide press coverage and formed part of official reports. These surveys
included facilities for parents, numbers of children’s trained doctors,
nurses and hospital play specialists and numbers of children being
nursed in adult wards as well as the availability of children’s
emergency services, dedicated adolescent care and of education for sick
children. In addition to helping to improve care in the UK she helped to
introduce similar programmes for family involvement and play to other
countries by visiting and teaching in hospitals overseas and by
arranging teaching visits to UK hospitals for enthusiastic groups of
overseas staff. These contacts included
Australia,
New Zealand, the Netherlands, Malta, Finland, West Germany, Denmark,
Japan, China, Kuwait, the Czech Republic, Poland and Bosnia. She was
associated with the setting up of EACH, the European Association for
Children in Hospital in 1992, the development of the EACH Charter for
Children in Hospital. She represented Action for Sick Children on EACH
and was currently its secretary. From 1964 she was associated with the
development of play in hospital. With Dr Charlotte Williamson she
established the Play in Hospital Liaison Committee and taught on three
of the training programmes for Hospital Play Specialists. She was a
Vice-President of the National Association for Hospital Play Staff and
Advisor to Action for Sick Children. She assisted in the programme of
family-centred care and hospital play in the Czech Republic since 1992.
Work with children with HIV/AIDS
Her early interest, gained in the USA, in children with HIV led her
to join CWAC – the Children With AIDS Charity – at its foundation in
1992, chairing it from 2000 to 2010, steering it to become a very
effective source of help for the many UK children infected and affected
with HIV/AIDS. Medical advances have seen HIV become more a chronic than
a terminal illness but social care is far behind. These children may,
from an early age, experience extreme poverty, stigma, bereavement,
adoption and fostering, while maintaining a strict medication regime
with long or short-term side effects and enduring hospital stays while
the need to maintain complete confidentiality regarding their health
status can bring social isolation. CWAC offers these children and their
families financial help, respite breaks, work experience and transport
to hospital, provides sexual health programmes in schools and clubs,
publishes a journal and runs a resource and campaign centre. Other
interests include child accident prevention, facilities for under-fives
and programmes for disabled children. She served on health authorities
and community health councils and undertook other
patient-representational roles during nearly sixty years of fulfilling
voluntary endeavour for children and young people.
Honours
At her death she was vice-chair of USUKAA and was closely involved in
the moves to change the NHS. She was awarded an MBE In 1973, elected an
Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health in
1993 and was awarded an honorary PhD in 2003 by Wheelock College in
Boston with whom she ran a summer school in London from 1978 to 2005. In
2011 ahe was presented with the inaugural USUKAA Lifetime Achievement
Award. In October 2012, she was posthumously bestowed with the Silver
Jan Masaryk Honorary Medal by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the
Czech Republic, Mr. Karel Schwarzenberg, for her exceptional
contribution to the advancement of care for hospitalized children in the
Czech Republic. The medal was presented to Ms Louise Belson, her
daughter, by His Excellency Michael Žantovský, the Czech Ambassador, at a
ceremony that took place at the Embassy of the Czech Republic in
London. The initiative for the award came from the Klicek Foundation
[1], of which Peg Belson was a friend and advocate.
To see more of who died in 2011
click here
