View report page

system of Health Visiting was started in Manchester and Salford by
the Ladies Sanitary Reform Association.
At first tracts and leaflets on health topics were distributed,
without much effect, and so a "respectable working woman" was
engaged to go from door to door to teach and help the poorer woman
where possible.
The Society supplied rules and the following extract describes
their routine work. "They must visit from house to house irrespective
of creed, or circumstance, in such localities as their superintendents
direct. They must carry with them carbolic powder,
explain its use and leave it where it is accepted; direct the attention
of those they visit to the evils of bad smells, want of fresh air,
impurities of all kinds; give hints to mothers on feeding and clothing
their children; where they find sickness, assist in promoting the
comfort of the invalid by personal help and report such cases to their
superintendent. They must urge the importance of cleanliness,
thrift, temperance on all possible occasions. They are desired to
get as many as possible to join the mothers' meetings of their district,
to use all their influence to induce those they visit to attend regularly
at their respective places of worship and to send the children to
school."
Miss Florence Nightingale was the first to appreciate the need
of special training for 'health missioners' as she called them, and the
first course was started in Buckinghamshire in 1871, but it was not
until 1925 that the training of Health Visitors became the responsibility
of the Ministry of Flealth.
The Maternity and Child Welfare Act, 1918 made it compulsory
for local authorities to provide a Flealth Visiting Service, although
this was limited to mothers with children under 5 years of age.
When the National Flealth Service Act was passed in 1948,
the scope of the Flealth Visitor's work enlarged and she now takes
in the whole family, including the elderly and the follow up of people
discharged from hospital and also the care of mental health.
What changes can we see over the century?
The population of the country has more than doubled, the
mfant mortality rate has dropped from 145 per thousand live births
to 21 per thousand, diphtheria is practically unknown—rickets is a
tunosity, lice and bugs are disappearing and the physical standard
of children's health is better than ever before. The willingness with
which the Health Visitor is invited into the homes (she has no right
Page 29