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Home visiting and medical follow.up of children attending the Council's schools
has for nearly fifty years been the duty of voluntary children's care committee workers
trained and organised by salaried staff employed by the Council. Following upon the
transfer to the Council in 1948 of responsibility for providing the health visiting service,
the Council's policy in recent years has been towards integrating this service with the
school nursing service. The Council has now amended the duties of the voluntary care
committees to enable health visitors to participate in the medical care of schoolchildren
in London and authority has been given for experiments to be conducted with a view
to ascertaining how the services of health visitors can best be used in conjunction with
the voluntary workers.
By arrangement with the Children's Officer, responsibility has been continued for Child life
duties under Part XIII of the Public Health (London) Act, 1936, as amended by Part V protection
of the Children Act, 1948. The visiting of foster.children and the inspection of the
premises in which the children are living have continued to be undertaken by health
visitors designated as ' child protection officers'. At the end of the year 647 children
were being supervised under these arrangements.
A most important function of the tuberculosis visitor comprises health education Tuberculosis
and advice carried out in the home. Chemotherapy involves more frequent visiting visitors
and requires more careful regulation of the patient's home life. Parents of child contacts
are encouraged to take their children to the chest clinics for B.C.G. vaccination and for
general surveillance.
Details of the Council's scheme for the training of student health visitors are given Training of
on page 123. student
r ° health
visitors
HOME NURSING
the home nursing service was provided, as hitherto, by 27 voluntary district
nursing organisations, acting as agents for the Council, liaison being maintained through
the Central Council for District Nursing in London. These associations (with one
exception, where a block grant is paid) were grant.aided to the extent of 90 per cent,
in 1952.53 and 92 per cent, in 1953.54 ; in 1954.55 increased work and rising costs
increased the total expenditure on the service so that it became more difficult for the
voluntary associations to raise the balance. The grant for 1954—55 was therefore increased
to 93 per cent, of approved expenditure.
The number of whole.time and part.time nurses employed at the end of 1954 was
558 (whole.time equivalent 508). This compares with 490 whole.time and part.time
nurses (444 whole.time equivalent) employed at the end of 1953. Twelve of the district
nursing organisations undertake district nurse training.
The total number of visits paid was 1,873,881, compared with 1,724,302 in 1953,
giving an average of 13 visits daily for each nurse (14 in 1953). The average case load of a
nurse at any one time was 23 (22.5 in 1953). Treatments completed totalled 61,352
(63,635 in 1953) and there were 11,792 patients still in nursing care at the end of the
year (10,562 in 1953).