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1938 22
WORK OF THE COUNCIL'S HEALTH VISITORS.
The Council's Health Visitors, nine in number, are responsible for visiting the
homes and supervising the mothers and children who are not attending Welfare
Centres in the Borough. Every endeavour is made to ensure attendance at the
appropriate centre so that there shall be medical, as well as nursing supervision and
advice. Child Life Protection work is entrusted to one of the Health Visitors who
is responsible for foster-children in the borough as a whole ; the remaining Health
Visitors work in their allotted districts. Health Visitors also attend at Municipal
Clinics and Clinics held by the subsidised Welfare Centres. The Health Visitors also
report on mothers attending ante-natally at various hospitals within the borough
or outside, and these reports are forwarded as a matter of routine to the hospital
authorities. A close connection is thereby maintained between the hospitals where
confinements take place and the Borough Council which is in charge of the welfare
of the mothers before they are confined. The work entailed in this co-operation
assumes considerable dimensions, particularly in the case of St. Mary, Islington,
Hospital, where, during 1938, 1,324 Islington mothers were confined.
Children who attend Welfare Centres are transferred for home supervision to
the Centres' Health Visitors. Certain difficulties of overlapping have occurred in the
past where some children in the same family, usually the younger members, attended
the Welfare Centres whilst others were not taken. During the year an arrangement
was arrived at by which the Centres' Health Visitors became definitely responsible
for supervision of all children in the same family under five years not attending school
where at least one of the children was on the Centre register. Children thus supervised,
but not attending the Centre, are known as " Centre-Attached Cases."
The Council sanctioned the attendance of two Health Visitors at a" Refresher
Course" for those engaged in public health work, held at Bedford College for Women,
Regent's Park, N.W.1, at the end of the year. Miss Flower and Miss Harris were the
Health Visitors who attended this course." Refresher Courses" such as these are
extremely useful in acquainting Health Visitors with what has been done in districts
other than their own, and in stimulating still further their interest in the work for
which they are responsible.