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167
General conclusions.
It is clear that, in regard to adenoids, as in respect of so many other
physical defects in the school child, the education authority is, to a considerable
extent, dealing with children already damaged before ever they enter
the portals of the school. The prevention of these defects must be effected
earlier in life, by an improvement of the home environment, and by closer
supervision by parents and others of the health of the voung child. During
the past year the Committee has taken an important step towards continuity
of supervision of the health of the child before and after admission to
school, by uniting the duties of the maternity and child welfare health
visitors and those of the school nurses, so that the same health visitor is
now in touch with a particular child from earliest infancy onwards. Similarly,
the medical staff are concerned with the child at all stages of his
growth. Apart from the question of co-operation, as occasion offers, with
the Public Health Committee in its work for the care of the mother and
the young child, and with the Housing and the Town Planning Committees in
their concern for the individual house and for the proper grouping and distribution
of houses, the Education Committee has an important educational
work in hand in seeing that the girls who will be the future mothers of
families acquire a sound knowledge of housecraft, so that they will be able
to make the fullest and wisest use of the home, whether good, mediocre,
or bad, which falls to their lot. Greatly as improved conditions of housing
are to be desired, there can be no doubt that a considerable proportion of the
disease and ill-health now arising out of unsatisfactory home accommodation
could be avoided, even under existing conditions of housing, were householders
awake to, and prepared to utilise, the full possibilities for health of even
the poor homes which they may now be occupying. Ultimately, the elimination
of the physical objects which so hamper the work of the Education
authority must depend on the steady education of the individual family in
the principles of health, together with the provision for the family of a dwelling
in which those principles of health can be effectively applied.
H. P. NEWSHOLME.
March, 1925.