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(6) FOLLOWING-UP
Following-up work by your Health Visitors & School
Nurses was obviously interfered with by the events
immediately prior to and subsequent to the outbreak of war,
and by vacancies on your staff, recorded on this page.
Nevertheless, considerable following-up has been accomplished
and this accounts to some extent for the relatively high
attendances at the Clinics.
It cannot be said with too great an emphasis how the
following-up visits of the Health Visitors & School Nurses
materially help in maintaining, and indeed improving, the
general level of health of your school-children. It is,
therefore, essential that an adequate number of health
visitors and school nurses should be available for this work.
At the beginning of the year you had on your staff two school
nurses and ten officers holding the joint appointment of
health visitor & school nurse. At the end of 1939 these
figures were respectively two and seven. I do urge that
these vacant posts should be filled.
(7) ARRANGEMENTS FOR TREATMENT.
(a) Minor Ailments. Normally there are three Minor
Ailments Clinics in Barking, at each of which six sessions
per week have been held until the commencement of hostilities
i.e., Central Clinic, Woodward Clinic and the temporary
Clinic in Porters Avenue.
The Central and Woodward Clinics are now First Aid
Posts in connection with the Civil Defence Scheme and both
of these Clinics were closed for a few days in September 1939
They were both re-opened when the works of adaptation and
protection had been completed and since then the full six
sessions per week have been held at both Clinics.
In December 1939 there were 539 attendances of
school-children for treatment at the Central Clinic, compared
with 1,110 in December 1939, and at the Woodward Clinic there
were 8l7 compared with 1,589 in December 1938. In other
words, the attendances at Central and Woodward Minor Ailments
Clinics in December 1939 were approximately half those of a
normal pre-war month.
The temporary Minor Ailments Clinic in the Church
Premises at Porters Avenue was discontinued in September 1939
and it has not been thought desirable to re-open this
temporary Clinic. The children who normally attended at
Porters Avenue Clinic now attend at Woodward Clinic.
One of the reasons for discontinuing the Clinic in
Porters Avenue was the lack of protected accommodation or
shelter in the immediate vicinity.
A small number of special cases are now attending at
the Humphrey Centre (First Aid Post), in the grounds of the
Barking Hospital, Upney Lane.
(b) Ophthalmic Service. Prior to the war the Specialist
Consultant (Mr. W.A. Gray, F.R.C.S.) attended for three
sessions per week in Barking.
On the outbreak of war this service was temporarily
discontinued and did not recommence until the 31st October
1939, since when until the close of the year raider review
some twenty-two sessions have been held.
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