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PERSONAL HEALTH SERVICES
The personal health services continued through the difficult
time of implementation of the Seebohm proposals in increasing
strength. The needs for extended services in all fields were highlighted
and much progress was made in both reappraisal and
implementation of these services.
Close liaison was maintained with the newly formed Social
Services department and after initial difficulties definite pathways
of contact are being established. This was aided in the summer
of 1971 by the establishment of the Mayston structure of the
nursing services, with appointment of three multi-disciplinary
area nursing officers covering the N.E., N.W. and South areas of
the Borough. Accommodation for these area nursing officers was
difficult to find in the existing clinics but it is hoped to decentralise
them in the near future.
With a view to 1974 and the proposed unification of the
Health Services liaison with general practitioners and hospital
services has continued ingrowing intensity with increased attachment
of local authority health staff to general practitioners and
liaison visits by health visitors and doctors to local hospitals
especially in the paediatric and geriatric fields. It is only with
the growing awareness of other medical disciplines of the true
nature of the role played by the community health services that
preventive medicine will come to take its true role alongside
curative medicine whilst still maintaining the close links with
other local authority departments in the role of medical advisor.
Maternity Services
The Rush Green and Harold Wood Maternity Units have
continued throughout the year but due to many factors, the general
practitioner unit at Rush Green Hospital has been incorporated
into the consultant maternity unit and this arrangement appears
to be functioning well.
Maternity Liaison Committees at both Harold Wood and
Rush Green Hospitals have continued and enables close links
to be made between the hospital and local authority maternity
services.
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