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75
ANNUAL REPORT
OF THE
SCHOOL MEDICAL OFFICER
For the Year 1933.
(1) STAFF.
A list of the personnel of the "Service" is given on a separate page at the
beginning of this report.
(2) CO-ORDINATION.
As the Medical Officer of Health is also School Medical Officer, the Health Services
in Barking show a corporate entity and co-ordinated activity which is the ideal for the
efficient conduct of such health schemes.
Some Health Visitors are also School Nurses, and are already familiar with the
parents and children and their home conditions through home visiting and conducting
Maternity and Child Welfare Clinics, by the time the children reach school age. Your
Medical Officers also conduct Maternity and Child Welfare Clinics in the areas where
the schools are situated, and have a personal contact and interest in the children from
before school age. They visit the children from time to time in the Barking Hospital,
and follow throughout, the course of infectious disease and its possible interference
through complications with the scholars' subsequent school curriculum.
These contacts produce harmony in operation and unification of purpose in the
Services.
Even the Ante-Natal work in Barking is under the control of the same Medical
Officers, and complications during pregnancy and parturition with their possible detrimental
influence on the children's school development (both mental and physical) are
observed from the beginning.