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repair of surgical appliances, including artificial limbs, spectacles and insulin for pupils
for whose education the Council is responsible. The Council also paid for in-patient
and out-patient treatment at hospitals outside London of its pupils who were temporarily
absent from their homes in London. Payment of the cost of emergency dental
treatment by private practitioners (for the relief of pain) during evenings, weekends
and at other times when clinics were not open was also authorised. With the coming
into force of the National Health Service Act the Council's hospitals were transferred
to the new Hospital Boards and all payments to voluntary hospitals and private
dental practitioners for these services ceased.
Payment was made of travelling expenses for pupils from Council schools and
their parents or escorts, to clinics more than two miles from the home of a senior
pupil, or one and a half miles in the case of a junior pupil, or for any shorter distance
when the school medical officer considered this necessary, e.g. in the case of certain
handicapped pupils.
At the end of 1948 there were 84 school treatment centres, and in addition 24
voluntary hospitals had agreed to continue to provide medical and dental treatment
for school children.
Treatment
Centres

*During the year spectacles were prescribed and supplied to 23,034 children. The number of eye
cases includes many "covered eye" cases who attend for observation; other children who do not require
to have their spectacles changed or do not require them.
‡The total number of attendances at minor ailment clinics was 1,052,081.
Until the 5th July, 1948, the Council, under the provisions of the Education
Act, 1944, carried out sight tests and supplied and repaired spectacles for school
pupils free of charge to parents. The arrangements provided for the services of
refractionists at the school treatment centres and attendance at each session of a
representative from the firm supplying the spectacles under contract with the Council.
Since the operation of the National Health Service Act, spectacles for school
pupils prescribed at school treatment centres have been supplied under the provisions
of the Supplementary Ophthalmic Services, pending the development of the Hospital
Eye Service. The arrangements provide for the continuance of eye sessions at the
Council's school treatment centres, the refractionists, whose names must be on the
Executive Council's approved Ophthalmic List, are employed and paid by the
Council, and the London Executive Council reimburses the Council on a per capita
basis.
By agreement with the Ophthalmic Services Committee of the London Executive
Council, the attendance at each session of an optician is continued, for the convenience
of parents, but it is made clear to them that they have freedom of choice of optician
for the child. The vast majority of the parents, however, avail themselves of the
services of the optician attending the centre.
At the end of 1948 there were 16 special classes for speech defects conducted by
part-time speech therapists under the supervision of a principal assistant medical
officer. Each child attends twice weekly for a period of 50 minutes and the maximum
number of children attending a session is nine.
Speech
therapy