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Clinic Services Available for Children Under Five.
Infants and children under five in attendance at the four Centres
are eligible for all the various forms of treatment given to school
children at the School Clinic, namely, the treatment of minor ailments,
defective vision and squint, ear, nose and throat troubles,
dental attention and orthopædic treatment. In these matters there is
close co-operation between the Centres and the Clinic.
Expectant and Nursing Mothers receive dental treatment.
MATERNITY HOSPITAL ACCOMMODATION.
Expectant mothers attending the Ante-natal Clinics have a wide
choice in regard to attendance in child birth—they may book with
one of the Borough midwives who attend every session of Ante-natal
Clinics or engage a private midwife or doctor; or go to a private
maternity home; or arrange for admission to one of the Maternity Hospitals
of the Metropolis or to a Maternity Department of a General
Hospital in London. There is an increasing demand for confinement
away from home and there is a shortage of available maternity beds
for normal cases. The majority of hospital cases go to the North
Middlesex Hospital, which took 127 in 1941, 159 in 1942 and 170
in 1943.
For some ten years the Maternity and Child Welfare Committee
has endeavoured to secure suitable Maternity Home accommodation
in the Borough. Success came in 1943, when Miss Brain retired
from her work at the Alexandra Park Nursing Home and the Council
purchased this property for the purpose of a Municipal Maternity
Home.
The Alexandra Maternity Home is situated on a corner site of
about three-quarters of an acre at the crossing of Alexandra Park
Road and Muswell Avenue. It is conveniently placed on a bus route
and is easily accessible from all parts of the Borough. The present
buildings have accommodation for 22 beds and an isolation bed, and
the site has an unbuilt frontage of over 100 feet on Alexandra ParkRoad.
The Home is capable of extension to 40 or 60 or even 80 beds
in the future if the development of the Health Services called for a
larger maternity unit in this area.
Maternity Bed Policy.
The acquisition of a local Maternity Home is, in my opinion, the
most important step forward which the Maternity Committee has
taken for many years. It anticipates two important Reports which
have appeared lately on the Maternity Services, namely—
1. The Report of the London Maternity Services (Voluntary
Organisations) Joint Committee November, 1943 (a Committee of
very experienced obstetricians practising in the London area).
2. Report on a "National Maternity Service" by the Royal
College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, May, 1944.
For the last twelve years official policy in regard to Maternity
bed provision has been based on the final report of the Departmental
Committee on Maternal Mortality and Morbidity (1932).
This report recommended—
"(iv) That in the interests of economy, as well as to facilitate
specialist treatment of non-obstetric conditions associated with
pregnancy and child-birth, new maternity accommodation should,
where practicable, be associated with general hospitals."