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work both by the patients themselves, and by the Health
Visitors. It is our aim to ensure for each mother a healthy and
happy state during pregnancy, and to detect any early symptoms
of disease which may interfere with this ideal, and in this work
we have been much helped by the willing co-operation of many of
the midwives resident in the Borough.
There is considerable need for early change of air in the case
of children who have just recovered from one of the debilitating
diseases, such as Measles, Whooping Cough, Bronchitis or Scarlet
Fever. We have been much helped to get over 20 such children
away during the past year by the kindness of the Invalid Children's
Aid Association, and a warm word of thanks is due to their
local secretary, Miss Armstrong. Other children have had similar
and much needed visits to the seaside or country through the
agency of the Secretary, Babies' Home Department, 4, Tavistock
Square. Four of the Bermondsey mothers, with their babies,
have been most kindly entertained through the same means at
the Lady Forster Guest House at Sydenham. The results in
every case have been most satisfactory, but it is sad to notice
how quickly some of the children relapse.
The power to provide milk free or at cost price to nursing or
expectant mothers and to children under five years, has been of
immense help in checking some of the ill-health due to a condition
of chronic under-feeding. Child Welfare work is so intimately
associated with the social and moral conditions of the
people that we can only assert here —what every woman knowsthat
it is the mother who makes or mars the home, and to the
mothers of Bermondsey is due ultimately the credit for the relatively
high standard of child life.
Enquiries were made late in the year as to the possibility of
providing cheap or free dinners for nursing mothers and children
under school age. This scheme did not meet with the
approval of the Ministry of Health, but if unemployment remains
at its present level an attempt will be made next winter to make
some similar provision.
Voluntary Centres. Three out of the four voluntary centres
are associated with the activities of a religious and social order,