View report page

vii
Outworkers' premises, especially where army work was being carried
out, have received special attention.
The Council arranged that the families of their employees on Active
Service should be visited by the Health Visitor, and this has proved
helpful in many ways.
The great loss of life which a war of such magnitude entails, brings
forcibly to the front the urgent necessity for special service and redoubled
energy to save infant life, and promote the physical development of the
children in order to compensate for the wastage now occurring. Local
authorities will have to restrict schemes for new works and buildings
except such as are of pressing necessity either for reasons of public
health or on account of war requirements, but it is to be hoped that Parliament
will not curtail the financial assistance promised, in carrying out
maternity and child welfare schemes.
The Local Government Board issued on 30th July, a circular in
which they expressed the hope that a grant of assistance from the
Exchequer would stimulate those local authorities who had not yet taken
action, to do so, and would encourage those already engaged in the work to
develop it still further. Accompanying the Board's letter was a
memorandum which set forth in outline the matters needing consideration
in the preparation of a comprehensive scheme.
In Westminster, the Health Society, in co-operation with the City
Council has been engaged for a number of years in carrying out this
kind of work, which has now reached a stage of development which
fulfils most of the requirements laid down by the Board in their
suggested scheme. Details are given in the body of the report.
The Board of Education is also directly interested in this work, and
in fact anticipated the Local Government Board by making substantial
grants towards schools for mothers, in which the Westminster Health
Society participated last year. Sir George Newman, in his sixth annual
report, points out that the diseases of the school child are the result in
too many cases of neglected infantile conditions and those again are the
result of maternal neglect or of ignorance in the young mother. The
education of the mother must be recognised as a factor of primary
importance and "mothercraft" should be regarded as one of the chief—
if indeed it be not the chief—industry of the State.
Difficulty is sometimes experienced in finding out exactly the
respective responsibilty of the various Government Departments in this
connection. It appears that beside local sanitary authorities, county
councils, care committees, &c., there are six central Government
authorities concerned in the care of infant life. Sir George Newman
thus differentiates their spheres of activity:—
" Speaking generally, questions of sanitation, public health and