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Milk or oatmeal may be allowed to child or mother on the advice of the
visitor or Inspector, and relying on these reports the Inspector revisits
indefinitely any eases requiring official watchfulness or trained experience.
In this connection approximately 250 revisits were made.
At the end of the first year of the infant's life those agencies cease their
activities.
One of the chief objects of the health visitors is to encourage
breast-feeding, but in the poorer parts of Hampstead instances have
been found whore the mother, although anxious to continue nursing her
baby, is unable to do so, owing to the fact that through poverty she
herself is insufficiently nourished. To moot cases of this kind the West
Hampstead Infants' Committee of the Hampstead Health Society have
formed a fund to supply nursing mothers with milk and other food.
This assistance, which is only given on certain conditions, one being
that the baby must be brought regularly to he weighed, has been found
of great value in our work in Hampstead for the prevention of infantile
mortality. The effect on the baby, as ascertained by periodical weighing,
of the improved nutrition of the mother, has in many cases been marked.
Maternal nutrition is an important factor in infant welfare, and it is
through improving the nutrition and general health of the mothers in
the poorer districts that we may most confidently hope to effect further
reductions in the amount of ill-health and mortality among infants.
Infant weighing lakes place at
(1) The Creche, 36, Hemstal Road, on Tuesday, 2.30 to
4.30., and
(2) St. Stephen's Room, Pond Street, on Thursdays, 2.30 to
4 o'clock.