View report page

104
Report to Medical Officer of Health of
Miss A. E. Hall, Chief Health Visitor.
Public Health Offices,
Bow Road, E. 3.
January, 1922.
Sir,
I beg to present the fourteenth Annual Report of the work of the
Maternity and Child Welfare Department.
Various alterations have been made during the year.
The special "Eye," ''Ante-natal" and "Treatment" Clinics,
and the "Sewing Class" have been discontinued, the attendances not
warranting the expense entailed.
Curiously enough, the numbers of expectant mothers attending
have been greater since the special Clinic was closed than before, and
there is no doubt but that a successful Ante-natal Clinic could be worked
up at Shirbutt Street, given the staff and time.
A second session for Infant Consultation has been found necessary
at the latter Clinic, and the Friday morning Treatment Clinic at Old
Ford has been converted into a third session for Infant Consultation.
At the Dental Clinic the services of the outside nurse have been
dispensed with, and the work undertaken by the Health Visitor, a much
more satisfactory arrangement from the Health Visitor's point of view.
There are now ten sessions held weekly, all in a flourishing condition:
with the exception of Allanmouth Road and the Dental Clinic,
neither of these showing any signs of the normal expansion that a successful
Clinic should do.
The separate Office for the Island Health Visitors has been closed,
and all the Health Visitors are now housed together at the Bromley
Public Hall.
Case papers are forwarded monthly to the Education Department
of the London County Council as the children under supervision attain
the age of 5 years.
The attention of the Minister of Health and the Registrar-General
was called to an advertising scheme (promoted by the proprietors of a
brand of milk) likely to have a very prejudicial effect on Infant Welfare
Work. The Registrar-General intimated to the Public officials concerned
that sanction would not be given to their participating in such a
scheme.
No less than nineteen of the notified cases of Zymotic Enteritis
were dead when the notifications were received. Not much chance for
the Health Visitor ! ! !