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53
As a result these clinics will be brought into the closest association with the
Council's divisional organisations, liaison with each hospital and medical school being
maintained through the appropriate divisional medical officer.
The same close association has operated for health visiting services required for
the infant welfare clinics at hospitals. The Council's health visitors attend the
clinics, where they work to the paediatrician in charge, although for the general
direction of their work outside the clinic they remain under the divisional medical
officer. At one clinic the medical school continues to employ a health visitor, subject
to the refund of ninety per cent. of her salary under the agreement with the Council,
and there is close co-operation in her work with the Council's health visitors.
At one of the teaching hospitals a training school for health visitors which had
been in existence for some years has been taken over by the Council. Four students
are trained annually, receiving their practical experience and tutorial instruction at
the hospital and taking systematic lectures at the Royal College of Nursing. The
student health visitors have been taken on to the Council's establishment and the
superintendent of the centre receives from the Council a personal allowance for her
tutorial duties.
There has been an extension of the arrangements under which the Council's
full-time assistant medical officers from infant welfare centres exchange with medical
officers working in the children's departments of hospitals. Exchanges are for periods
of not less than six months and enable the Council's medical officers to keep abreast
of developments in the care of sick children and the hospital medical officers to watch
the growth and development of healthy ones. An exchange of four medical officers
from either side has commenced satisfactorily with the Hospital for Sick Children,
Great Ormond Street. Similar arrangements have been continued with other
hospitals. There are no financial adjustments between the two sides.
Institute of
Child Health
The Council has entered upon a scheme of co-operation with the Institute of
Child Health for the erection of a model welfare centre in the neighbourhood of the
Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street. The Institute, which is part of
the British Postgraduate Medical Federation of the University of London, provides
educational and research facilities both preventive and curative in the field of child
health. Through it the Council has the opportunity of co-operation with the
University and with the hospital to secure for child health the prominent place which
it should have in the National Health Service. The proposed model welfare centre
would serve the purpose of teaching postgraduate students and conducting research
as well as meeting the needs of the neighbourhood. Its functions would include an
infant welfare centre, an ante-natal clinic, a school treatment centre, a nutrition
clinic, a minor ailment clinic, a dental clinic, together with lecture and demonstration
rooms. Allied specialist clinics such as enuresis and child guidance would be held in
the hospital nearby. The scheme is being worked out in close co-operation between
the Council's officers and those of the Institute. Generally, the capital expenses
would be met by the Institute and the Council would contribute a ninety per cent,
grant on the approved expenditure on services proper to it as the local health
authority. The cost of teaching and research would fall on the Institute.
Dental care
Details of the priority services for expectant and nursing mothers and children
will be found on page 122 in the report of the Council's Chief Dental Surgeon.
Welfare foods, drugs, etc.
The list of welfare foods, nutrients, drugs and medical requisites recommended
by a special departmental committee for use in the Council's maternity and child
welfare centres and day nurseries has remained in force subject to minor amendments