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72
Social care
organisation
Co-operation of voluntary bodies.
The general care of the children in the London elementary schools is carried on
by a social service, consisting of voluntary workers organised into school care
committees, which are assisted and directed by paid organisers. This system prevents
the work of medical inspection and treatment and the wider work of general physical
care of the child becoming stereotyped and bureaucratised, a fault which might
otherwise be difficult to avoid. Friendliness and co-operation with the parents
are the key notes of this social service. The teachers whenever possible give much
assistance, and in many cases it is entirely owing to their help and devotion that the
care committee work in the schools is possible.
Co-operation
with
voluntary
hospitals.
As every care committee is independent, it would be impossible to summarise
the work that is done, but it is far-reaching in its scope. The care committee
workers are as a rule tenacious in following-up all cases where children are ailing or
neglected, and upon them is thrown the responsibility of seeing that not a child
attending school suffers from lack of action—whether medical or dental attention,
or feeding or clothing—which it is possible to take to ameliorate this condition.
London is abundantly rich in voluntary hospitals which provide extensive
services for the poor. It has been the aim of the school medical service to work
harmoniously in co-operation with these. While some of them are definitely
included in the authority's scheme for medical treatment, others are only linked
with the service by voluntary arrangements. At a number of hospitals a liaison
officer or officers, consisting of a member or members of the Council's care
committee organising staff, attends regularly and keeps the hospitals in touch with
the social services of the schools.
There has been complaint in the press and on the part of social workers of the
long waiting periods and inadequate arrangements for out-patients at voluntary
hospitals. The hospitals have been greatly concerned about this and so have the
authorities of King Edward's and other funds. Generally speaking the tendency
is to improve the arrangements and things are getting better.
The arrangements made under the Council's scheme are very precise and have not
been the subject of complaint. All visits by Council cases are made by appointment.
The children are seen separately and promptly. There is no undue waiting. The
Council's officer attends and supervises the arrangements. The medical officers
are paid for their work and the attention of the hospital is called to any irregularity.
The arrangements conform to what the Board of Education has defined as "a
school clinic within a hospital."
If there were no arrangements made, large numbers of parents of school
children would nevertheless elect to attend at voluntary hospitals and would be
subject to the ordinary inconvenience of unregulated out-patient treatment.
In such cases all touch would be lost and all following-up at school and in the
home by the Council's care organisation would fail to be carried out.
The presence of the organiser at the hospital ensures following-up for all the
children under the scheme, and influences the proper care and following-up of
children attending the hospitals not under the scheme, too, for " non-Council"
ailments, as the organiser is appealed to on behalf of these also.
The association of the organisers with voluntary hospitals makes a great difference
in the results of hospital treatment, and generally speaking the condition of
children attending hospitals where the Council's organisers attend is satisfactory,
whereas the condition of children attending hospitals outside the scheme where no
organiser attends is as regards following-up quite unsatisfactory.
On the whole, the fact that the Council has arrangements with many voluntary
hospitals is of very great benefit to the child population of London, and without
this co-operation the work for the care of the children would definitely be less
effective and in many cases the good that is now being done would be very largely lost.
The scope of the work in those hospitals in which the Council maintains an
organiser or organisers is shown in the following reports dealing with two of them,
viz., Guy's hospital and the Miller hospital:—