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96
It would be as well to remember that of all local authority
officers, the health visitor has had the earliest and probably the
greatest impact on child and family. Indeed, it is largely the results
of her efforts that our maternity and child welfare services have
reached and maintained such a level of efficiency and popularity.
Her specialities of child and family health, covering as they do
almost 100 years of progress, embrace more than a modicum of
psychology and social science, a fact which is often obscured under
a plethora of new professional disciplines which have burgeoned
during the past two or three decades. If, following reorganisation,
closer integration of school and local health services results then
substantial advantages could accrue by employing the health
visitor's talents to establish continuity of child and family care up
to school-leaving age. In such a situation I am confident that problems
of mental cruelty and child rejection by eccentric or
personality-defective parents would be considerably reduced.
New Legislation
Health Services and Public Health Act, 1968
(Child-Minders and Private Day Nurseries)
From November 1st, 1968, Section 60 of the Health Services and
Public Health Act, 1968, extended the scope of the Nurseries and
Child-Minders Regulation Act, 1948.
This section requires local authorities
(i) to register premises other than those used wholly or
mainly as private dwellings in which children are received
to be looked after for a period of two hours or more in
the day (or an aggregate of two hours) instead, as hitherto,
for "a substantial part of the day"; and
(ii) to register a person who for reward looks after one or
more children under the age of five years, to whom she
is not related, for two hours in the aggregate in any day
or for any longer period not exceeding six days.
(Previously, registration was necessary only if the number
of children exceeded two from more than one household
and they were received for the day or a substantial part
thereof.)
The Council is now empowered
(i) to fix the maximum number of children to be received by
a child-minder (previously the maximum fixed included
other children already in the house);