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81
Organisation Society, the Middlesex Hospital, Miss Honor Brooke's Fund and the
Jewish Girls' Institute all come in for a share of thanks from the association. The
Bell Street and Cosway Street Committee note that about five-sixths of the loans
for spectacles are repaid.
The St. Pancras Association reports that the medical results are encouraging,
and more success is recorded even in dental cases. Some difficulty is experienced
in following-up the mass of the latter. Great appreciation is expressed for the
Highgate Treatment Centre, where children are kept in after operations. One
Committee goes so far as to say that lunch milk given on the doctor's recommendation
is of more value than school dinners. Another Committee is finding good
results from the arrangement of periodical spectacle rotas taken by the collector,
who sees all the children in their glasses and so helps to emphasise their importance.
The special officer in this area has been most successful in persuading obstinate
parents to get medical treatment, and reference to the N.S.P.C.C. has been comparatively
rare.
The housing shortage which has produced so many inconveniences has incidentally
rendered the work of "following-up" more effectual. The constant removal
of the children from one area to another, which occurred before the war, made
real following-up very difficult and brought the workers to despair. It was the
usual state of things in many schools, containing the children most in need, for
more than fifty per cent. of the children to have disappeared from observation
between inspection and re-inspection. Whole sections of the population were
vagrant and moved regularly every quarter day, leaving no trace behind them.
This, of course, played havoc with the work of the Care Organisation. Now the
children remain in the same school indefinitely, continued care is possible and the
improved results which are so noticeable are very largely to be ascribed to this.
tion.
The school doctors re-inspect at intervals all children noted with defects whether
referred for treatment or placed under observation. For each child found at original
inspection to be ailing or suffering from any defect a re-inspection card is made
out. All re-inspection cards originating in a given term are kept together. The
children are seen again the next term but one, and all the entries are reviewed.
The cards are then forwarded to the County Hall in order that the results of reinspection
may be tabulated. The cards of all children who are not discharged
at the re-inspection are returned to the schools, and after the lapse of another
term the children are again seen and the cards with final entries are once more
sent up for statistical purposes. Any child not discharged at the second re-inspection
becomes a special case and a new re-inspection card is made out.
The results of re-inspection give the measure of the success or otherwise of
the following-up of the children. 197,413 cases which had been referred for treatment
or placed under special medical observation were re-inspected during 1924.
105,879 of these were primary re-inspections of children referred for treatment.
Of these 45,659 (43.1 per cent.) were discharged, and 17,054 (16.1) were improved
or under treatment, and 43,166 (40.8 per cent.) were reported as not treated and
still requiring it. 50,702 cases not discharged at their first re-inspection were
presented for a second review, and of these 28,834 (56.9 per cent.) were found to have
had treatment or no longer to require it. Combining the result of the first and
second re-inspections it is found that 75.5 per cent. of the children noted for treatment
at the original inspection had been marked off as no longer in need of medical
attention. The corresponding figure in 1923 was 76.8 per cent. Dental cases
present the greatest difficulty, and if these be excluded the combined results for the
remaining defects show that in 82 per cent. of the cases the ailments were
remedied.
Where there is persistent neglect on the part of the parents to obtain treatment
the case is referred to the N.S.P.C.C. to take action under section 12 of the Children