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At the end of the year the minister had come to the following further decisions:—
Daleham Gardens maternity and child welfare and school treatment centre,
Hampstead.—The Minister was unable to approve this project for the time being
owing to the need for stringent economy in expenditure on the health services.
The former Pioneer Health Centre— Stage I of the schemes of adaptation was
approved.
Decisions on the other schemes were still awaited.
Woodberry
Down
Health centres
The building of the first comprehensive health centre at Woodberry Down was
continued during the year and it is expected that the centre will be ready for use
in the spring of 1952.
The Pioneer
Health
Centre
The Pioneer Health Centre, Peckham, was forced to close in March, 1950 owing
to insufficient financial support. For some years the Centre had difficulty in obtaining
adequate funds, and early in 1949 the Council was approached for financial assistance.
This request was sympathetically considered by representatives of the Council.
The facilities provided by the Centre were available only to its members and the
Council's representatives pointed out that if the Council were to grant financial
assistance under any of its statutory powers it would probably consider it essential
for the facilities to be generally available to residents of the district and not restricted
to members only. With this qualification in mind, certain aspects of the work of
the Centre were considered which could be integrated into the services provided by
the Council under both the National Health Service and the Education Acts. The
Centre authorities, however, were unanimous that the Centre must continue to concentrate
on research and therefore limit its membership to family groups, and that
there appeared to be no alternative but to defer for the time being the prospect of
financial help from the Council.
The difficulties of the Centre subsequently became more acute and in March,
1950, the authorities opened negotiations for continuing and developing the Centre
on the basis of the report of a scientific advisory committee convened by the Sir
Halley Stewart Trust, from which the Centre received a substantial part of its income.
This report recommended that the Centre should be (i) developed as a health centre
under section 21 of the National Health Service Act, 1946 ; (ii) developed as a research
institute under section 16 of that Act; and (iii) continued as a family club. If the
Centre had been developed on these lines it would have been possible for the Council
to give financial assistance under (i) and, to a limited extent, under (iii), and for the
Minister of Health to do so under (ii). The Centre could also, of course, have sought
D