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58
Open-air
schools for
tuberculous
children.
In addition to the provision of treatment for tuberculous children in residential
institutions, the Council continued the use of the open-air schools (type T) specifically
for tuberculous children and extended their use as set out below to include non-notified
cases and contacts.
The six schools—Elizabethan (Fulham), Geere House (Stepney), Kensal House
(Paddington), Springwell House (Battersea), Stormont House (Hackney), and
Nightingale House (Bermondsey) have, together, accommodation for 568 children.
The number on the roll on 31st December, 1933, was 590, and the average attendance
for the year was 475.
Admission to these schools is granted on a certificate of the medical officer of
the Council, and children returning home after a period of residential treatment
in sanatoria are given preference. During the year 1933, 221 children were admitted
and 228 discharged. Of the latter, 49 were transferred as fit to attend elementary
schools, 85 were fit for work, 46 were transferred to residential institutions for
residential treatment for tuberculosis or admitted to hospitals for various reasons,
36 moved away, 10 were transferred to special schools, and 2 were discharged for
other reasons.
As the reduction in the number of definitely tuberculous children eligible for
these schools resulted in a considerable number of vacancies, it was decided to extend
their scope of usefulness by admitting children suspected to be suffering from
tuberculosis or children living in conditions rendering them particularly liable to
the disease, who would thus secure the benefit of the constant supervision of the
tuberculosis officers serving as medical officers of the schools.
In connection with this widening of the scope of eligibility for admission the
medical officers of the schools report as follows:—
I am of opinion that this is a public health preventative measure which is likely to prove
of value. (Springwell House).
In my opinion, the scope of the school will be much widened by the admission of contacts
who will then be certainly more under the eye of the tuberculosis officer than is possible otherwise,
and the regime of rest and work under open-air conditions will obviously be very beneficial.—(The
Elizabethan).
In the course of dispensary work, the tuberculosis officer sees many children of poor
physique, who are living in contact with cases of tuberculosis in bad home conditions. A period
at an open air school, under close medical supervision, cannot fail to be of benefit to these
children, not only in building up their physique, but also in helping to raise their resistance to
infection. The majority of the recently admitted non-tuberculous children were definitely of a
poorer physical standard than the majority of the previously admitted tuberculous children.
Almost all of the latter group entered the school on return home from a period of sanatorium
treatment at the end of which their physique had been properly built up, and the function of the
school was to maintain a standard which had already been reached prior to admission.—
(Nightingale House).
Efforts were made to secure that, during 1933, every child in attendance at these
schools should have a holiday out of London either by means of private arrangements
or through the education school journey organisation.