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1937] 76
MATERNITY AND CHILD WELFARE.
Report by Assistant Medical Officer of Health.
A considerable number of developments and activities have to be reported in
connection with Maternity and Child Welfare during the year 1937.
This year saw the opening of the Council's first Municipal Day Nursery, the
Miriam Price Coleman Day Nursery and Sunlight Clinic. There was also an
extension to the Home Help Scheme, an extension of the facilities under which the
Council might make Milk Grants to expectant and nursing mothers and children
under the age of five, and also, arising out of the Ministry of Health's Circular 1622,
consideration was also given to the establishment of an Emergency Unit and a
Consultative Maternity and Gynaecological Clinic. In addition, the appointment of
an additional Assistant Medical Officer in connection with the administration of the
wards at the North and West Islington Welfare Centres, and to carry out other
work at the Council's Day Nursery, was also under consideration.
Miriam Price Coleman Day Nursery and Sunlight Clinic, Scholefield Road, AT.19.
This building was opened by Councillor G. B. Naish, J.P., L.C.C., Mayor of
Islington, on October 23rd, 1937, and the Day Nursery portion has been designed to
accommodate 45 children. It was erected on a site having an area of approximately
8,000 sq. ft., and the main Nursery frontage faces South East. The Nursery building
consists of two functionally distinct portions, (a) the Nursery, and (b) the Clinic
section.
(a) The Nursery.'—The entrance from Scholefield Road leads into the
Reception Hall with an Isolation Room and Matron's office adjoining. A corridor
leads from the Reception Hall to the three Nursery rooms, and opening out from
one side of the corridor is a room for children's clothing and a laundry, whilst on the
other side there is a bath room and children's w.c. accommodation. The three
Nursery rooms for toddlers, tinies and babies respectively are separated from each
other by glazed sliding Esavian partitions, and lead at the other end to the infants'
changing room and milk room. The walls of the Nursery are tiled and the floors are
laid with cork tiles. The Nursery rooms open out on the Southern aspect to a glass
roofed verandah and beyond this to the playground covered with green asphalt.
The doors separating the Nursery from the playground can be folded back completely.
This portion of the building also contains kitchen and scullery on the ground floor,
and on the first and second floors residential accommodation for the Nursery staff.
The Nursery staff consists of a Matron, Senior Nurse, four Probationers and a parttime
Kindergarten teacher. There is also a resident cook, non-resident cleaner
and domestic. Each Probationer is provided with a separate bedroom containing a
lavatory basin and hot and cold running water.
The Nursery is intended primarily for the reception of children whose mothers
are obliged to go out to work, but consideration may also be given to the admission
of cases where there is ill-health or difficult home circumstances, or where children
are specially recommended by the Medical Officer of Health on account of other
exceptional circumstances.
Nursery Hours.
The Nursery is open every day from 8 a.m. to 6.30 p.m. and until 1 p.m. on
Saturdays.