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74
of posters and leaflets in the child health centres. Safety booklets
and leaflets are distributed regularly but it is often the spoken
word which proves most effective. The opportunities for this
form of health education clearly offer themselves to those field
staff who have access to people in their own homes, i.e., health
visitors, public health inspectors, home nurses, social workers,
home helps, etc., and much unpublicized health education in this
form goes on continuously as part of their day-to-day work.
Experience shows that certain households are accident prone
and it is only by having complete information about all accidents
that intensive home safety propaganda can be concentrated in the
places where it is needed most.
Family casework and problem families
The five social workers spend at least half their time supervising
problem families. During the spring and summer the work was
handicapped by shortage of staff.
The families, who are referred through the Case Committee,
are usually well known to several other social agencies before
being transferred to a case worker.
At the beginning of the year 15 families were being visited, but
by the autumn this number had increased to 27 ; six cases were
closed during the year. All had numerous problems which included
marriage disputes and poor care or control of the children.
Often the parents wish to live beyond their usually low means or
are irresponsible in other ways. Not all can be said to be of low
intelligence, but with three exceptions all the parents could be
described as having " deprived " home backgrounds. In three cases
there was no father living in the home. Often debts are so pressing
that attention has first to be paid to this problem before others
can be considered. The aim is to maintain the family as a unit
and to raise the standard of child care. On the first point there
was one failure when all the children in a family were taken into
care, but there has been limited success with other families in
improving their standards of child care.
Chest clinics
There are in the Borough three Chest Clinics, namely, the Wandsworth
Chest Clinic situated in the Municipal Buildings, the
Battersea Chest Clinic at St. John's Hospital and the Balham Chest
Clinic at St. James' Hospital. The Wandsworth and Battersea
Chest Clinics draw their patients mainly from the Borough but
the Balham Chest Clinic draws patients also from the adjoining
London Borough of Lambeth.
Statistics relating to tuberculosis will be found on pages 18 and
19.