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occasion postponing the opening date, and then for some days there
was only one child, but when the enemy action had ceased the
nursery went ahead. Another nursery of the hut type was in course
of erection when all labour was withdrawn for house repairs in
June and it has never been finished.
No one can doubt the great value of nursery life to the fortunate
children who attend one, but the total accommodation of the nine
nurseries is about enough for the odd hundreds only of the 12,650
children under five years old estimated to be residing in the district
at the end of 1944. The tendency is for nursery accommodation
to become limited more and more to those special cases where the
mother is the breadwinner.
The new Education Act has imposed the duty of providing
nursery schools for children of two to five years upon the County
Council the Local Education Authority. The hours that schools
are open are insufficient to enable a woman to leave her child and
do a full day's work. When the nursery school closes the child
cannot be taken to a day nursery, because no child is allowed by
law to attend one when attending the other. (Public Health
(London) Act, 1936, §251.)
The only way to overcome this is to combine the day nursery and
the nursery school as they are in a wartime nursery, but, unhappily,
such a solution appears to find no favour with the Ministry of
Education.
The wartime nurseries meanwhile are full, and there is a heavy
waiting list. This demand emphasises more than any words can do
the desire for their retention and, indeed, expansion by those
mothers who are unwilling or unable to give up their work.
Summary of Work Done by the Official
Health Visitors.
Ante-natal visits 1,106
Ante-natal re-visits 145
Births, 1st visits 1,168
Births, re-visits 219
Births, stillborn 40
Ophthalmia, 1st visits 32
Ophthalmia, re-visits 16
Infantile deaths, visits 39
Welfare Centres attendances 118
Diphtheria prevention clinic attendances 161
Post-natal visits 1,340