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grants of 5s. per extern case and 10s. per intern case to the institutions already
carrying out the work. These grants are not accepted by University College
and Middlesex Hospitals.
Hospital facilities for children under school age.—During 1918 the Committee
of the Mayoress' Nursing Fund for Sick Children started a Home for Sick
Poor Children at Avalon, 1, St. Albans Road, N.W. 5. This is a wellappointed
house with good grounds, with beds for 20 children under school
age, and it is intended for the reception of cases who are ailing and needing
better observation or treatment than can be given them in their own homes,
and who are not of the kind which are admitted to ordinary hospitals. To
this institution the Council decided to make a grant of £500 per annum.
University College Hospital, also, had four beds for the observation and treatment
of infants referred from the hospital infants consultation, and the Council
offered to pay an annual sum for the reservation of four more beds for the
use of St. Pancras infants for the same purpose. The Hospital did not, however,
see its way to doing this.
All the above-mentioned payments for work done by voluntary agencies
began on October 23rd, 1918.
Work done during 1918.
Advice Curds.—Cards of advice have been posted to the mothers of all
infants whose births have been notified.
968 cards of advice to expectant mothers have also been distributed through
University College Hospital, Middlesex Hospital, and the Maternity Nursing
Association to those expectants who have arranged for their confinement
through those institutions.
Home Visiting.—The department includes two full-time health visitors and
two who are health visitors as to half their time and sanitary inspectors as to
the other half, as well as one full-time health visitor who devotes her time to
the visiting of cases of measles. These ladies made during the year 2,953
visits to 1,239 infants (apart from cases of measles). They also made 389
visits to 177 expectant mothers, from lists of expectants supplied by University
College and Middlesex Hospitals.
Much more visiting work was done by the paid visitors at the various infant
welfare centres. They undertook the visiting of all children in attendance at
the centres, and also of large numbers of infants in their districts referred to
them by the Medical Officer of Health upon the notification of their birth being
received. The method adopted was as follows: Blank case-cards with the
name of the infants written in were sent to the centres for such births as the
Town Hall visitors were not dealing with, and these were returned to the
Medical Officer of Health when they had been filled up after visiting by the
paid visitors of the centres, in many cases supplemented by the attendance of
the infant at the centres. Copies of these case-cards were made at the Town
Hall, which, together with the case-cards of the Town Hall visitors, constituted
a complete card index of all the 1918 births. At the end of the year the
cards at the centres were again sent in to the Medical Officer of Health and
returned after the additional particulars thereon had been transferred to the