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153
A four-year course of nurse training, which includes syllabuses of the General
Nursing Council for general registration, part I of the health visitor course,
and district nurse training, was begun at Hammersmith Hospital Post-graduate
Medical School and Battersea College of Technology in association with the South
London Hospital for Women. The results of this integrated scheme of nurse training
are awaited with great interest.
Loan
equipment
A loan equipment service, which is a useful adjunct to the district nursing service,
has been provided by the medical loan depots of the British Red Cross Society, who
receive a block grant from the Council. District nursing associations also make similar
provision for their own patients. It has, however, become increasingly difficult for the
associations to provide, store, and maintain the large and expensive equipment which
has been coming increasingly into use during the last few years. Since 1953 the Council
has taken upon itself the responsibility for providing lifting apparatus, wheel chairs,
beds, and other large items of equipment.
Home help
The Council's scheme (under section 29 of the National Health Service Act) provided
inter alia for the continuation of the former borough service but for organisation
on a divisional basis to secure a greater measure of uniformity and to facilitate extension
and development where necessary (and for the recovery of charges assessed according
to means for services provided).
The position before the 5th July, 1948, was that all the metropolitan boroughs (but
not the City of London) operated home help schemes for maternity cases and that all
the boroughs (except one) and the City had schemes for assisting sick and infirm persons.
The extent of the provision varied widely from borough to borough—in all 7,389 cases
were attended in 1947 and at the end of that year 826 home helps were employed.
Section 29 somewhat amended the category of household to which help could be given
making it turn on the presence " of any person who is ill, lying-in, an expectant mother,
mentally defective, aged, or a child not over compulsory school age. ..."
The Council's scheme having been agreed, there was, as can be seen from the table on
page 70, a rapid increase in numbers of home helps and cases assisted.
After a year's experience of the service the Health Committee agreed to the
following order of priority for dealing with applications for home help:
(i) confinement cases ;
(ii) acute or chronic illness ;
(iii) aged and infirm, and the blind ;
(iv) households with a mental defective, or large families of children not over
school age.
The distribution of service has remained fairly constant. The aged and chronic sick
constitute 75 to 80 per cent. of the patients receiving home help ; 4 to 6 per cent. are
maternity cases; 3 or 4 per cent. are tuberculous; and the remainder miscellaneous.
Extension of
the service
There have been four extensions of the service.
(i) Night helps—introduced in 1953 (after an amendment to the scheme) provided
for the chronic sick in their own home so that relatives can get one or two nights'
undisturbed sleep a week. Demand has been small, possibly because it is supplementary
to voluntary assistance.
(ii) Child helps—also introduced in 1953—provided for children in their own homes
who are temporarily deprived of both parents and have no other adult to care for them.
Again demand has been small but the service may render it unnecessary to receive
children into care.