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Supervision of Midlives
Miss E. O'Connor, Superintendent of the Lady Rayleigh Training Home, has
continued to undertake the non-medical supervision of midwives.

These statistics show a decrease in the number of home visits made by health
visltors In 1962 and the various reasons for this decrease began to happen early in
the year when health visitors and clinic nurses were increasingly employed in the
smallpox vaccination sessions which were then required, to cope with the panic
caused at that time by the outbreak of smallpox up and down the country. An additional
strain was caused by the amount of illness among the staff which occurred at
the same time end included one or two long periods of sick leave.
The death of Miss Jeffreys in May 1962 was a great loss to the families she
served and to her colleagues. Miss McGilvray, another health visitor who had worked
in Barking for 25 years, left Barking in June 1962 to take up an appointment of Health
Visitor Group Adviser in North Devon. These two vacancies were later filled and the
establishment of staff returned to the 1961 level of nine whole-time health visitors,
one part-time health visitor, one full-time and one part-time TB visitors and sixteen
part-time clinic nurses, against the required establishment of twenty-two health
visitors.
The shortage of health visitors causes concern throughout the country and in
Barking we have great need of more staff to work in the growing fields of medicosocial
work entrusted to them. We are fortunate in having a grand troupe of parttime
clinic nurses who relieve health visitors considerably of clinic duties, thus
enabling them to do more home visiting.
The trend of younger marriages means there is a greater need for advice and
guidance on the care of babies and small children. The increasing problem of old
people living alone or found ill or infirm in their own houses and without adequate
is another field of work which involves more and more of the health visitor's
time.
In the field of mental health, again health visitors are finding that they are
frequently called upon to support, comfort and advise the relatives of the mentally
for in many instances it is the health visitor who is first aware of the breakdown
of family unity due to the mental Illness of one of its members and the distress and
anxiety it causes, which in turn often creates further problems within the family.
Many more mothers of young children are seeking employment to supplement
family incomes and to help provide the now accepted emblems of modern living, i. e.
television sets, washing machines, motor cars and so on, and it is increasingly difficult
to find mothers at home and it is felt by many of the health visiting staff that
the changing pattern of family life makes home visiting more time-consuming than
in the past.
Despite the changes in the field of health visiting, there is a challenge
and great stimulation in the present-day problems and in devising the ways and
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