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27
MATERNITY AND CHILD WELFARE SERVICES.
Under the council's scheme of maternity and child welfare, complete arrangements are made
for the care of expectant and nursing mothers and children up to five years of age. The scheme
includes ante-natal and post-natal clinics, infant consultation sessions, toddlers clinics, day nurseries,
a maternity home, the provision of an obstetric consultant for difficult confinements, dental treatment
for mothers and toddlers and the provision of dentures for necessitous expectant and nursing
mothers, hospital and convalescent treatment for mothers and infants, home nursing and home
helps, arrangements for the boarding-out of children while the mother is in hospital or for their free
admission to a day nursery, facilities for the skilled nursing and treatment of cases of puerperal
sepsis, and the supply of free milk, dinners and cod liver oil preparations to necessitous cases.
On the 1st April, 1937, the Kenley Street and Raymede infant welfare centres and the baby
clinic came under the financial control of the council. The transfer of the three institutions was
smoothly effected without disturbance to the routine work of the institutions. It is very satisfactory
to report that the voluntary committees in each case have continued their association with the centre
and give their services in assisting at the sessions and in maintaining the social side of the work which
is of much value.
The transfer of infant welfare institutions to the council has entailed the addition to the council's
staff of a number of nurses with varying experience, qualifications and salaries, who were formerly
employed by the voluntary committees. The council have accordingly approved three categories
(women health officers, health visitors, and sisters), each with a prescribed salary scale, in which
each officer has been graded according to her qualifications.
In view of the high infant mortality rate in the borough, it is natural that the care of infants and
toddlers has received the constant attention of the maternity and child welfare committee. The
council's medical officers supervise the health of infants in the welfare centres, and the health
visiting staff visit them frequently at home in order to advise and help in difficulty. The problem
of overcrowding in the waiting-rooms at the infant consultation sessions has been satisfactorily
solved at some of the centres by the establishment of an appointment system for the mothers, and
it seems likely that this innovation will become generally adopted in the future. Special sessions
for toddlers are held at four of the welfare centres, and have proved a useful institution. Medical
treatment for infant and toddler, when this cannot be obtained from the family doctor, is available
at the baby clinic which serves as the treatment centre for the welfare institutions in the borough.
The auxiliary treatment centre at the Notting Dale school treatment centre at Kenley Street has
proved a great help to the mothers in that area, who found it difficult to take their children to the
baby clinic. These two treatment centres, together with the Princess Louise hospital in North
Kensington, make it easy to obtain either medical, dental or orthopaedic treatment for the toddler
with a minimum of inconvenience to the mother. The arrangement by which the three school
treatment centres in North Kensington are also treatment centres for the toddler is a satisfactory
one, since continuity of medical treatment in the same premises is obtained from infancy up to
school-leaving age.
The council's application of their free milk scheme was extended in April in response to Circular
1519 of the Ministry of Health, and no necessitous expectant or nursing mother or child under five
years of age is now precluded from a grant of milk if the applications sub-committee consider that it
would improve the health of that woman or child. Cod liver oil or similar preparations, and preparations
containing iron are also supplied free of charge to necessitous cases on the recommendation
of the council's medical officers.
The council have attached great importance to the question of providing cheaper milk for all
working-class expectant and nursing mothers and pre-school children in the borough and, prior to
the issue of the Government's White Paper dealing with their milk policy, they had asked the
Metropolitan Boroughs' Standing Joint Committee to enter into further communication with the
Milk Marketing Board on this matter.
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The ante-natal work in the borough, as organised in 1934, has continued to expand. Co-operation
between clinics, doctors, midwives and hospitals is established and is giving excellent results. Owing
to the appointment of municipal midwives by the London county council under the Midwives Act,
1936, the borough council did not appoint another midwife on their staff when the Kensington
midwife resigned her position during the year.
It has been a year of health propaganda—the National Health Campaign has directed public
attention to the importance of health, and the educational propaganda of the council's medical
officers and health visitors has been constantly directed towards teaching the rules of healthy living
and raising the standard of hygiene in the borough.