View report page

SCHOOL HEALTH SERVICE.
the 1st may, 1954, was the fiftieth anniversary of the day upon which the Council
became the Local Education Authority for the County of London. One of the ways
in which the Council marked this jubilee was by holding at the County Hall a special
exhibition and display of the work done in the field of special education for the handicapped
pupil, a field in which there is of necessity the closest collaboration between the
education and school health services.
An account of the growth and development of the school health service over the
past fifty years will be found in Appendix C, page 167, whilst the following paragraphs
deal with the details of the work done during 1954.
Organisation
Like most of the personal health services, the school health service is organised on a
divisional basis (see pages 125-143 for the reports of the divisional medical officers). The
voluntary school care committees continued to be responsible for the follow-up of pupils
found at medical inspections to be in need of treatment and care committee representatives
were present at over 90 per cent. of the medical inspections.
In 1952 the Education Committee, jointly with the Health Committee, reported to
the Council on a number of suggestions made by the then Minister of Education in
relation to the school health service. This report referred to the inter-departmental
working party of officers which had been set up to consider certain matters relating to
the duties of health visitors in connection with the complete integration of the school
health and maternity and child welfare services and also the duties of the medical treatment
organisers (children's care organisers in the Public Health department).
The outcome of the prolonged deliberations is not yet known as, during the year
the Council decided that experiments should be held and that no decision on the
working party report would be made until the reports on their experiments were
available. The experiments will involve the withdrawal of the Public Health children's
care organisers from certain school treatment centres where health visitors/school
nurses will take over part of their duties. This will include liaison with the voluntary
care committees on which the Council still relies for the medical following-up for
school children.
To help towards cementing the desired co-operation between the care committees
and the health visitor/school nursing staff, the Education Committee have added a clause
to the constitution of care committees which reads as follows:—
'To co-operate fully with the school nurse/health visiting staff on all cases where
specialised nursing knowledge appears essential in securing the most effective treatment'.
In bringing this addition to the notice of the care committees the Education Officer
said 'The specific function of the Care Committee is to endeavour to make sure that
nothing in the child's mental or physical make-up or his home surroundings shall hinder
him from obtaining full benefit from the education provided.
'In pursuance of this aim, Care Committees will be at pains to enlist the specialised
knowledge of health visitors who, through their responsibilities in the field of family
health, will already be in touch with many of the families'.
Since the National Health Service Act, 1946, came into force, giving additional
responsibility to the Council, it has become increasingly clear that the paramount need
is for a still closer co-operation between all field workers. The drawing together still
closer of the care committees and the health visitor/school nursing staff will, therefore,
only be a development of a principle already well known and the value of which is
beyond dispute since it can only result in a more effective service to the community.
94