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divisional staff designed the settings and made posters and special exhibits such as a
layette, toys, etc. Professional staff were on duty until 9 p.m. to give interested visitors
an account of the local health authority services.
Special educational sessions held at the welfare centres totalled 757 and the attendances
6,640, both figures being a considerable advance on any previous year. Activities
directed by health visitors included individual talks and discussion groups, cookery
demonstrations and sewing classes, film shows, etc. Kindred activities were organised
by parents' clubs attached to some of the centres, which received every encouragement.
Posters and leaflets on seasonal topics, changed at monthly intervals, were displayed at
all divisional establishments, at Town Halls (by permission of the Borough Councils)
and, in some instances (e.g., vaccination and immunisation propaganda) in doctors'
surgeries. Articles on health subjects were written by the divisional staff and published
in the Islington Public Libraries Bulletin. The three Borough Councils agreed to stock,
in the public libraries, books recommended as being valuable for expectant mothers and
mothers of young children, and a list of the books, with library reference numbers, was
posted in each welfare centre.
Following lectures on the value of milk and the importance of food hygiene given
by sanitary inspectors (by permission of the borough medical officers of health) to
children in 16 of the senior schools, five of the head teachers were able to arrange for
pupils to visit large dairy depots. The visits were reported to have been both instructive
and beneficial. The aim will be to repeat the lecture and visiting programme annually,
so that the propaganda may reach successive batches of children.
Conclusion
At me end of the year, owing to i11-healtn, the services of Mr. Laurence wilKes, who
had been divisional administrative officer since the inception of the division and had
built up and co-ordinated its administrative organisation were lost to the department. I
should like here to pay tribute to his qualities of judgment, good humour and commonsense,
which were of inestimable advantage to his colleagues.
Relations with voluntary and statutory organisations and their officers continued to
be most cordial and I am grateful to them, to the Divisional Health Committee, and to
the divisional staff, for their courtesy, hard work and loyal co-operation.
Division 4, comprising the boroughs of Hackney, Shoreditch and Stoke Newington.
Dr. S. King reports :
Woodberry
Down Health
Centre
During the year many services were extended at the Woodberry Down Health
Centre by additional sessions, while the following new services were commenced:
speech therapy, psychiatric community care and civil defence ambulance section training.
By the end of the year facilities were provided for 139 local health authority sessions in
all. The estimated weekly average number of persons attending these sessions at die
centre in January was 784 ; this had increased to 1,339 at the end of the year.
The centre continued to enjoy considerable publicity and some 2,130 visitors were
conducted round the premises. It is worthy of note that no less than 1,502 of these
visitors were either trainee or post-graduate students in the professions concerned with
public health. They included doctors, nursery and hospital nurses, health visitors,
midwives, psychiatric and other social workers, social science students and teachers.
The considerable number of visitors from the dominions, colonies and foreign countries
who have continued to visit the centre has included a large number of medical officers
concerned with public health services.
The six general medical practitioners who commenced to practise at the centre in
July, 1953, continued to do so and have achieved a large measure of co-operation.
Their surgery sessions have been slightly increased to 55 a week, and through the Medical
Staff Committee, they have made representations for the provision of technical
assistance in the clinical side room on the premises and for the provision of physiotherapy
facilities.
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