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Student Midwife Training
District training for student midwives in association with the Whittington Hospital started on 1st
March and also continued as previously in association with the Alexandra Maternity Home. Training
lasts for three months in the domiciliary field, the student being attached to a teaching district midwife,
having spent nine months prior to this in midwifery training hospital.
Of the twenty student midwives from the Whittington Hospital who received district training in
Haringey, nineteen were successful.
Of the seven student midwives from Alexandra Maternity Home, six were successful..
The failure ratio was 7.4%, comparing favourably with the national average in 1965 of 13.4%.
Of the successful candidates, three were recruited to become members of our domiciliary midwifery
service and one to the home nursing service.
In September the Beacon Lodge Trust, which administers Beacon Lodge Mother and Baby Home,
Eastern Avenue, N.2., was placed in difficulties because of a shortage of midwifery staff.
Arrangements were made for the Council's domiciliary midwifery service to provide assistance.
The Home was placed on the domiciliary midwives' night rota on three nights a week and nursing visits
were paid on two days of the week, thus relieving the midwifery Sister for "off-duty". This arrangement
has worked very amicably.
HEALTH VISITING SERVICE
Recruitment of new members of staff to acquire a full establishment during 1966, once again proved
impossible. At the end of the year vacancies for one third of the staff establishment remained unfilled.
Under these circumstances the health visitor is unable to maintain a close contact with the majority of
families on her district. She must of necessity give preference to the more pressing day to day demands
of social problems within the family and seek specialist help in a minority of cases.
Two parts of the Borough which give cause for special concern are the Stroud Green and Burgoyne
districts, both of which have a high percentage of immigrants. At each of these clinics there is only one
health visitor. Over recent years the number of babies born for whom they are responsible has increased
considerably. In fact they have the highest number of birth notifications of any other individual health
visitor district. Office accommodation at Burgoyne Road clinic is available when an additional health
visitor can be recruited. This is not the case at Stroud Green and it is not possible to make any
structural alterations to these very inadequate premises.
The actual number of visits made by the health visitors this year was as shown in the following
table.

Student Health Visitors
The period of training has now been extended by three months. I am pleased to record that three
students commenced training in September, an improvement on the previous year. Regular recruitment of
suitable candidates for training over forthcoming years appears to be the only solution in building up a
realistic establishment of trained staff and to offset the vacancies that will arise due to the retirement of
some of the older members of the staff.
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