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Appendix A.
Extract from the Minutes of the Council.
Children under School Age: Ministry of Health Circular No. 1550.
We have had before us at this and our previous meeting a
circular communication, dated the 29th May, 1936, from the
Ministry of Health, stating that the Minister has had under
consideration the arrangements made by local authorities for the
supervision of the health of toddlers, i.e., children between the
ages of eighteen months and five years. The Minister understands
that more than sixteen per cent. of the children entering school
are found to require treatment for some disease or defect, and it
is clear that in many cases these conditions could have been
prevented from developing, or could have been quickly cured, if
adequate supervision of the health of the children had been
exercised throughout the pre-school years by systematic periodical
health visiting.
The Minister asks that the Council will review its existing welfare
arrangements with a view to enlarging the scope thereof and calls
attention to the fact that in some areas special arrangements have
been made for the holding of toddlers' clinics at the infant welfare
centres and for school clinics to be available for the treatment of
minor ailments and of special defects in young children. In this
latter connexion it is stated that it is desirable, wherever possible,
that the medical officer who will supervise the health of these children
alter they enter school should be responsible for this supervision
during the pre-school years. Finally it is suggested that, if there
are in the area of the Council any considerable number of mothers
who are regularly employed away from home, or whose home
conditions are such that their health would benefit as the result of
their children receiving daily care and supervision, it would be
well for the Council to consider the desirability of establishing day
nurseries. It is pointed out that children can be admitted to these
nurseries at an earlier age than that at which they are eligible for
admission to nursery schools and they are usually kept for longer
hours each day than is possible in the case of children attending
nursery schools.
At our previous meeting we requested the Medical Officer of
Health to confer with the voluntary committees of the welfare:
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