View report page

grounds of the Barking Hospital, where there will be an ideal opportunity
to develop even closer contacts with the hospital and specialist
services. I believe this idea closely resembles a pre-war concept of a
"polyclinic" which would form your main health centre and accommodate
all those specialist services which could not be provided in
each of the other centres. I hope that it will soon be possible to make
a modest start on this project by rebuilding the existing Upney Clinic
on the health centre site, instead of spending the money on alterations
and additions to the existing clinic which had originally been approved
for the 1950/51 Capital Building Programme.
The draft County Development Plan provided for a health centre
on your new Thames View Housing Estate, but since the ultimate
population of this Estate was not expected to exceed 7,000 it would
clearly have been inappropriate to allocate one of your four major
health centres to this area. Provision is being made for clinic premises
to be situated in the centre of the Estate close to the shoppin area and
adjacent to the schools.
The Local Executive Council has been offered accommodation
in this clinic for general practitioner services, and we shall all eagerly
await the outcome of this approach. Much has been talked for the
need for co-operation between the general practitioner and the local
health services. In my view this is a golden opportunity to develop
the health centre concept with local authority health visiting nursing
and secretarial staff to assist the family doctor in his practice, and the
general practitioner carrying out for his own patients ir mach of the
work traditionally performed by local authority medical officers
I sincerely hope that the opportunity will not be missed for it will
not present itself again.
CARE OF MOTHERS AND YOUNG CHILDRE>
MATERNITY SERVICE
The National Health Service Act has created a split in idministrative
responsibility for the maternity services, control of the Upne)
Maternity Pavilion having passed to the Ilford and Ba; ing Group
Hospital Management Committee whilst it is now the fui > tion of the
County Council to provide ante-natal and post-natal ci tics, and a
domiciliary midwifery service. The local Executive Council also conies
into the picture in cases where the mother-to-be chooses to receive
care from her own doctor or from a general practitioner obstetrician
The position is further complicated by the fact that a family doc|pr
called in to the home to deal with an emergency receives a fee from
Page 38