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HEALTH VISITOR AND FAMILY DOCTOR PRACTICE
There are now three health visitors working with family doctor practices; in two
cases they run "well-baby"and ante-natal clinics in the surgeries. This has widened the
health visitors' contact with families in which there are no children and this has been beneficial
to the families and health visitors and has been greatly appreciated by the doctors.
Any considerable extension of these attachments is unlikely until family doctors, with overlapping
practices, are able to arrange their work in groups within compact geographical
areas.
There are some general practitioners who hold "well baby" clinics and prophylaxis
sessions. This development has reduced attendances at similar sessions in welfare centres.
Ante-natal sessions held at hospitals and by general practitioners also affect
the number of attendances at the local authority centres. Co-operation between them and
health visitors is good.
TRAINING AND POST-CERTIFICATE COURSES
The Council for the Training of Health Visitors issued a new syllabus of health
visitor training, and one year courses based on this syllabus started in the autumn of 1965.
Six students were financially sponsored by this Council. The health visitor student enters
the training school as a state registered nurse with, in addition, either obstetric experience
or midwifery training.
Health visitors are encouraged to keep abreast of changes and advances in health
visiting through five-yearly refresher courses arranged by the London Boroughs' Training
Committee and lectures arranged by the department.
STUDENTS AND VISITORS
Facilities were provided for ten student health visitors at anytime to gain practical
work experience under the supervision of those health visitors who, as fieldwork instructors,
have been prepared for this teaching responsibility.
Forty-seven student nurses from the nurse training schools of St. Stephen's Hospital
and St. Charles's Hospital have been given insight into public health work and have been
taught by health visitors at their respective training schools on the "Social Aspects of Disease".
Twenty-four students from Hammersmith Further Education College, the North
Western Polytechnic, Queen Elizabeth College, Wellgarth Training College, and also thirtytwo
D.P.H. and D.C.H. students have visited public health establishments.
Visits of observation have been arranged for one student from the Kensington
District Nursing Association; and two Assistant Child Care Officers have each been given
training in a day nursery for two weeks.
There have been four visitors from overseas - Holland, Finland, U.S.A. and
Korea - interested in administration or teaching vocational subjects, who have spent some
time in the public health nursing section collecting information or observing the work.
HOME NURSING
Section 25 of the National Health Service Act, 1946, requires local health
authorities to make provision for home nursing services in their areas, either by employing
nurses themselves or by making arrangements with voluntary organisations. In Kensington
and Chelsea, the two District Nursing Associations have carried out the service ever since
the Act came into force. The Borough Council meets its responsibility by the payment of
93% of the net approved expenditure incurred in providing the service.
The question of whether the service should continue to be administered by the
voluntary associations, or whether it would be more advantageous for it to be conducted
directly by the Council, was carefully considered. The Council agreed on 8th December,