View report page

The School Medical Service whereby all children are seen in school by a
doctor with parents, and the Health Visitor in attendance and with the opportunity
of a case conference with head teacher and class teacher to follow should
be expanded to have routine inspection at ages 5, 8, 11 and 14 with yearly in
spections after that age
The Clinics to which children with minor ailments, injuries, and emergencies
can be referred direct from the schools should be open every day all
day, with a doctor either in attendance or on call. This saves much distress
to school teachers who have to search for working parents, private doctors who
are probably out visiting, or take or send the children to hospital.
Equipment in offices and clinics should be brought up to date, good filing
systems, plenty of intercommunicating and external telephones, visual aids for
Health Education typewriters and dictographs are needed in individual offices
and clinics, while for the department as a whole, part of the services of a
printing department and of a computer for statistical surveys and reports are
most important
Mental Health, Little has been done as yet for this branch of Public
Health in local authorities, One of the first links must be with the local
Psychiatric Hospital and with the Psychiatric Units of the local general hospitals,
and home visiting should be shared by hospital psychiatric social workers
and local authority mental welfare officers. Day hostels and resident hostels
for patients convalescing from mental illness are urgently necessary More
training centres and greater variety of work opportunities are needed for those
handicapped by mental subnormality or recovering from mental illness
Welfare Since the War the social conscience has been stirred by the plight
of the homeless the destitute, neglected and abandoned children, the disabled
or handicapped and the lonely aged. The work of the Welfare Section is to
accept responsibility for all of these, and the Medical Officer of Health has
a duty to enlighten the local authority on how best to treat, or if possible
prevent, these evils The homeless should be provided with homes, this is the
true provision expected from Council housing to house the needy and the improvident
for the sake of their children, The destitute should be gently helped
in co operation with Church or Voluntary Association members, according to the
circumstances the cause of destitution whether neglect, drink drugs, mental
apathy or instability treated, and personality and self respect restored. The
little children needing care because of inadequate or cruel parents or because
of illness absence or death of parents should be as carefully treated and
guarded as if the Department staff were their own parents and every fosterhome,
or children s home, or family hostel should be subject to frequent and unheralded
visiting by Department staff such as Health Visitors who will have the intelligence
to recognize the signs of lack of care, malnutrition or unhappiness.
Those disabled by crippling disease, deafness: or blindness are enough
in number in a Borough of the size ofthenew one of which Brentford and Chiswick
will be part, to require full scale provision of resident, of school, and of
training facilities and of a school for educationally subnormal, supplemented
by the provision of special classes in the day schools (there are still not
nearly enough classes for the teaching of reading to children who have fallen
behind in this skill)- Experiments in the use of the New Alphabet, and the
Teaching Machine are desirable
The lonely aged have had a fair amount of attention from the Welfare Department
in the last few years but the new Welfare Section must do much more. The
Home Help Service should belong to this section and should be greatly expanded.
Meals for the housebound elderly and clubs and occupation centres to which the
over 60 s can become attached should be organised by the Department through
-9-