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The Health of Barking
I know of a child who showed no inclination to learn to read until one day
quite suddenly she took it up, and within three months was reading " The Pied
Piper of Hamelin." The child was six or seven years of age. In the same way these
expectant mothers, when they want to learn about things, pick up things enormously
quickly, particularly, as I have said, in their own homes.
It is in the woman's own home that it can be pointed out to her the value of
breast feeding and indeed the danger of bottle feeding, with the milk kept here and
the bottle kept there, and father sometimes cleaning the teat, which, even though
he does use salt, in the end he doesn't do it so well as mother does.
It is so much easier to talk about the value there is in moving air for the baby,
and, believe it or not, even premature babies want moving air. When you are in a
woman's own home you can show her how to open her windows and doors to get
fresh air, without the risk of the child getting too cold. What is more, handling
the baby is not something which is learned over-night, and handling the mother's
own baby in the mother's own home is a much more homely lesson than seeing
exactly the same things done in any clinic, particularly, as I have said before, in our
crowded clinics.
It is in this homely atmosphere that the value of immunisation against diphtheria
can be spoken of much more confidentially, and this can be more compelling than
the same advice given anywhere else.
It is true that we did during 1948 upwards of 6,000 visits of this nature, and,
having regard to all other activities this isn't a figure to our discredit, but I should
take a lot more credit to the service as a whole if the figure were larger.
As I see it the time of a Health Visitor is also taken up with regard to the
aged and the infirm, arranging the problems of the chronic sick, and also co-operating
with hospitals which is likely to take up very much more time than it has heretofore.
In addition, although no longer personally responsible for infant life protection, as
such visits come under the Children's Officer, I think it is safe to say that at this
stage we are spending quite so much of our time in this matter as we have in the
past. Indeed, I don't think that whatever system is set up, the demands of Health
Visitors' time in home visits are likely to be diminished.
Health Centres.
It was John who brought up the matter to me of health centres in Barking,
and I told him in a joking way, which was in fact a true history, of a very young
junior clerk in our Department, a boy in the teen-age, who had been reading a lot
about the Beveridge Plan, and who came to me one day to ask what was it all about.
Because," said he, " after all, it is only what we are doing in Barking." We have
had in Barking for many years what I have no doubt can be looked upon as the
forerunners of the health centres of the future. The health centre of the future
will be very much better than we have had in the past, but our clinics to-day are,
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