View report page

7
service and every effort has been made to consolidate the main
sections of the nursing service by means of meetings and discussions.
Progress has been a little delayed because of the territorial
separation of the headquarters of the Home Nursing Service
(comprising two former voluntary Nursing Associations) from the
health visitors, school health and midwifery services, but during the
year considerable progress has been made by means of local
meetings of nursing staff and this will be further pursued.
It has long been realised that the social services departments of
a Council, of which, of course, the Health Department is one,
cannot, and should not, be completely self-contained and there
may be some overlapping of duties and responsibilities. It is all
the more important, therefore, that there should be close links at
all levels between departments concerned with social services. To
achieve this, the Council set up a Co-ordinating Committee of
Members to which problems concerning two or more departments
in the field of social welfare are referred. To advise this Committee
of Members on matters of policy, the Chief Officers of the
departments concerned with social services met periodically to
discuss the work of their Departments. In addition to the need
for close integration of the statutory social service departments of
the Council, there is an equal need for the close integration of the
statutory services with voluntary bodies and Government departments.
This is achieved, so far as casework is concerned, by the
Case Committee, a short account of whose activities is given in
the body of the Report. Apart from this, I am able to say that
it would seem that there is a close liaison in Wandsworth amongst
all categories of personnel concerned with the social services
generally.
Apart from close links with other social services, the Health
Department must maintain cordial ties with other health establishments
in the area and particularly with the family doctors. There
has always been, in this area, a happy relationship between the
family doctors and the Health Departments and on the formation
of the new Borough and its Health Department, His Worship the
Mayor of Wandsworth gave a reception to which were invited all
the family doctors practising in the area. Members of the Health
Committee were present as well as senior members of the Health
Department staff and it was generally agreed that the evening was
a highly successful one, whereby old contacts were renewed and
new ones made. The Health Department was very grateful to
His Worship for arranging this function.
It was not to be expected that a task of organisation such
as was set by the London Government Act, 1963, could be accomplished
without some "teething troubles" but in proportion to the
problems presented, these were comparatively small. In the last
quarter of the year, a review of the work and organisation of the