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117
EMERGENCY CALL SERVICE.
This service covers local authority health, welfare and children's
emergencies on a twenty-four hour, seven days a week, basis.
The scheme is shared between this Council and the City of
Westminster and the cost of running the service is divided between the
two authorities. It is staffed by four rota duty officers based at
Westminster City Hall, who call into action appropriate departmental
emergency services when offices are closed, i.e., at night and during
week-ends and public holidays.
During 1967, 1,207 calls were received for this Council's
services necessitating the calling into action of services by the
duty officers. The comparable figure for 1966 was 1,549.
HEALTH EDUCATION.
Health education is a continuing and, to a large extent, a
repetitive process and, inevitably, many of the Council's activities
follow well-marked paths. This is particularly the case with mothers
and children of whom the population is constantly being renewed.
The Council have maintained links with the national organisations
active in this field - the Royal Society for the Prevention of
Accidents, the Central Council for Health Education, the National
Association for Mental Health and the National Association for
Maternal and Child Welfare, whose publicity and information material
is widely used. The panel of senior officers has continued its
responsibility for devising and carrying out policy, and the working
team of health visitors again undertook detailed planning and
preparation.
Dr. W.T.D. Ray, Principal Medical Officer with responsibility
for the school health service, continued his membership of the ILEA'S
Advisory Committee on Health Education.

Much of this work attracts little publicity and is not designed
to do so since it is carried out by fieldworkers-principally, the
health visitors-in the day-to-day course of their work. Special
projects, mounted from time to time and emphasising particularly
important facets of the plan, are given more publicity and their
effect thereby strengthened. The year's pattern was, therefore, of
continued daily contact on the one hand and, on the other, the mounting
of a number of special projects for which departmental resources were
augmented by assistance from other quarters-a campaign in the
Spring on nutrition, a campaign at the approach of winter, which
included an exhibition on safety in the home, and a careers exhibition
which was also designed to give the public a clear idea of the health
and welfare service available to them.