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STAFF
the staff employed in the public health department is set out in Appendix E on
page 241.
Staff training
Refresher
courses
As in previous years arrangements were made for many of the medical, nursing and
other professional staff to attend refresher courses to keep them abreast of developments
in their respective fields. For medical staff, where the general aim is that each officer
shall receive the equivalent of one week's refresher training every five years, courses in
paediatrics and school health organised by the British Post-graduate Medical Federation
and the Society of Medical Officers of Health were well supported, these being attended
by over sixty officers. During the year rather more than a hundred members of the
nursing and midwifery staff attended post-certificate refresher courses organised by
their professional associations.
In-service training included short courses of lectures given at the County Hall,
by lecturers eminent in their particular fields, for ward sisters in welfare homes and for
nurses in boarding special schools with the object of keeping them in touch with new
developments and techniques ; in addition lectures were arranged on a divisional basis.
In collaboration with the Central Council for Health Education a series of in-service
training courses and lectures were arranged for members of the staff of the Department.
These proved very popular and instructive and dealt with the education and care of
women in childbirth, the avenues of approach to foot health, the construction of visual
aids and presentation of displays in welfare centres. When the Report of the Working
Party on the Recruitment and Training of Health Visitors was published a lecture on
the report was given to health visitors and other nursing staff by Dr. A. Beauchamp, a
member of the Working Party. Reference is made elsewhere in this report (page 67)
to refresher training provided for domiciliary midwives during the year.
Post-entry
Training
it is opportune to mention the extent to which post-entry training ot administrative
and clerical staff had developed by 1956. New entrants attend compulsorily a series
of lectures, given by senior officers of the department, both on local government and
the health services generally and on particular aspects of the Council's administration of
the health services and also attend meetings of the Council and of the Health Committee
and visit various establishments to see the health services in action. In addition, under
service-wide arrangements most new entrants go to a 3-day residential induction course
at which they are given an insight into the organisation and administration of the
Council's services generally. For intermediate grades of administrative staff series of
meetings are arranged consisting of talks and discussion groups covering a variety of
subjects associated with local government in general and the Council's own administration.
These meetings, which are well supported though attendance is quite voluntary,
are proving valuable both in the imparting of knowledge and in giving staff an opportunity
of voicing their opinions in open discussion.
Health
visitors
The increasing demand on the services of health visitors to give guidance in homes
faced with difficult situations particularly where advice on the availability of the various
social services is needed, led to an experimental course in social case-work being introduced
late in 1955. The course, which comprised eight fortnightly half-day sessions in
the form of seminars attended by eighteen health visitors and led by a lecturer in social
studies from the London School of Economics, was completed early in 1956 and proved
most successful. It is intended that as many health visitors as possible shall receive this
special form of training and a second course for a further eighteen visitors started in the
autumn.
Training of
student
health
visitors
The University of London Institute of Education continued to provide the theoretical
instruction for the majority of the Council's student health visitors. Of the remainder,
some received it at the Battersea College of Technology and others at the Royal College
of Nursing.
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