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125
coming on Thursday being Maternity Home cases only. This makes
it possible to regulate the numbers and avoid overcrowding at any one
session, with the consequent long waiting. It is, however, quite
obvious that the 20 or 25 mothers attending at one session cannot all
be seen at once, and valuable time might be saved if lectures could be
given and a sewing class held concurrently with the ante-natal clinics,
so that the mothers could be usefully occupied while waiting their turn
to see the doctor. Some excellent sets of model garments for children
were prepared for the Health Exhibition, and these could be used for
demonstration purposes if the accommodation at the centre was suitable.
Unfortunately, we have no permanent quarters in which to exhibit
these models at present, and so their usefulness has been limited. The
Health Visitors give informal talks to the mothers as opportunity
offers, and give them patterns of clothing, etc., but this side of the
work needs further development.
We also urgently need better dressing room accommodation, and
this is particularly felt when patients with different standards of
cleanliness happen to attend on the same morning.
Example is so much better than precept that we cannot but realize
how some of our mothers do a real service to the community in
attending the centre, because they demonstrate so much more clearly
than our words what ought to be and can be done in matters of personal
cleanliness and hygiene. But it is our duty to protect those who trust
us with their welfare, from all risk of infection or annoyance, and the
accommodation which we have at the ante-natal centre can only be
described as a makeshift.
Note by the Medical Officer :—
Dr. Hill's report was written some months before the plans for the
new centre in Harton Street were proposed. Once this new building
is erected, this will meet the difficulties referred to, and which latter,
paradoxical though it might seem, are partly due to the increasing
success of the work. The question of instruction in sewing is receiving
the Committee's consideration.