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9
Fifteen per cent. of the children are found to
require the use of spectacles. Many of them are already
supplied with them, so that the percentage of children
without them is not so great.
Children are sometimes found attending school
without their spectacles; either they have broken them,
or their parents say they can see as well without them
and so leave them off.
The fact is that the child may have normal sight in
one eye and very defective sight in the other eye, It is
to improve and save what there is of sight in the defective
eye, that the child has been given glasses to wear.
It is not always easy to make parents understand this,
and hence they abandon their use on the least provocation.
It would save the child an immense amount of
headache and eye-strain.
There is a fuller report of the work done in this
branch at ahe end. (See Clinic).
The Committee have a contract with a firm of
opticians to supply glasses at a comparatively low
figure, and in cases where the parents are unable to pay
even this amount, issue glasses at a lower figure, and in
a few cases gratis.
Deformities.
There are no children suffering from any severe
deformities, only four with slight lateral curvation of
spine, nor have we any cripples.
Blind Children.
Four children who are blind are attending a Blind
School under the help of the Education Committee.
E.—General Review of the Relation of Home Circumstances
and Social and Industrial Conditions
to the Health and Physical Condition
of the Children inspected.
The social and industrial conditions were on the
whole good. Several large factories in the district
whieh during the war were employed in munitions have
during the past year discharged a number of men, but
most of these have left the district. At the end of the
year the moulders strike caused a certain amount of