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The Essex County Council, who are responsible for
the treatment of Tuberculosis in Barking, have made arrangements
for their case records in respect of evacuated children
to be sent to the Reception Areas and the names of these
children are temporarily removed from your Register.
At the end of the year, Barking in common with
other Evacuation Areas found that children were drifting
back from the Reception Areas, and that therefore Services
which had been curtailed at the beginning of the war would
have to be re-organised.
(3) THE EXTENT TO WHICH THE SCHOOL MEDICAL SERVICES HAVE,
FUNCTIONED DURING 1939
As I have said in my introductory letter, your
School Medical Services functioned normally until the
Declaration of War, when the Schools were closed and the
first Evacuation Plan was operated.
This, naturally, disrupted the whole of your
Special Services, but the following pages will attempt to
show the way in which these Services were affected and the
way in which they were re-organised to deal with the special
problems which have since arisen.
(4) HYGIENE.
It must be assumed, on general principles, that the
state of tension which has prevailed for the greater portion
of 1939, the "black-out" and the abnormal movements of the
population during the last four months, must have had a
disturbing influence on children generally. On the other
hand, the movement of a large number of children to country
districts and the added freedom which the children have enjoyed
on account of the closure of the schools - a matter which must
be taken into account - makes me feel justified in saying that,
generally speaking, the health of the child population did not
suffer during the months of war in 1939. On the contrary,
many of them benefitted by their "holiday" in the country.
It may be possible in my next Annual Report to assess
to some extent the effect of war conditions on the health of
the children. As the war had been in progress for four
months only during 1939 we have been unable to gather sufficient
data for a considered opinion at this stage; neither were
the Services sufficiently active to enable us to obtain the
necessary data.
(5) MEDICAL INSPECTION.
School Medical inspection ceased on the closing of
the schools for evacuation.
Towards the end of the year, however, the Local
Education Authority had under consideration a scheme for the
re-opening of some of the schools in the Area, for short
periods of education, and this scheme will provide for the
medical inspection of all children whilst at school.
During November and December 1939, 274 of the schoolchildren
remaining in the Area were specially medically
inspected in connection with "trickle evacuation" under the
original Evacuation Plan.
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