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21
LADY HEALTH VISITORS.
The work arising out of medical inspection is absorbing an
increasing proportion of the time of the Lady Health Visitors.
The visiting and re-visiting of the cases of infectious diseases
notilied from the schools and of the cases specially referred by the
Assistant School Medical Officers entails an amount of work which
can barely be appreciated from the mere figures returned in the
periodical reports. Each visit is the occasion, not merely of the
advice given, but of memoranda, and the issue of innumerable
forms and notices rendered necessary for the effective administration
of the scheme. There is still the same lack of coordination
with the work of the Attendance Officers, and the need for regulations
to secure uniformity of procedure among all persons taking
part in the work of medical inspection.
TREATMENT.
It is due largely to the efforts of the Health Visitors in following
up the cases which the School doctors think require continued
supervision in order that treatment shall be carried out, that such
results as it is possible to record have been achieved. It is true
that most of the defects found upon medical inspection do receive
the attention of the parents upon the representation of the school
doctor alone.
There remain, after all efforts have been made, a large number
of cases of physical defect and disease which are allowed to go
from bad to worse, to remain untreated and uncured, or to get
well as hap will have it.
For a considerable proportion of these, provision for treatment
is required, for others, direct powers of statutory compulsion.
The utterly neglectful parents are not numerous, expressed as
a proportion, but they cause an infinite deal of trouble with little
to see for it, and they bulk much more prominently on this account
in the administrative eye.