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24
Post-Natal.
Home Visiting.
Five Health Visitors are employed by the Corporation,
who are engaged half-time in the School Medical Service,
and in one case as Nurse to the Dental Service. One nurse
attends once weekly at the Tuberculosis Dispensary, and
carries out the home visiting of tuberculosis patients, thus
linking up a County health service with the services of
the Borough.
About 84 per cent. of babies born in Bromley are
visited by the Health Visitors, and it is upon this home
instruction by a skilled person that the success or failure
of the Maternity and Child Welfare Service depends. With
the natural extension of the School Medical Services there
has been an inroad into the time available for maternity
and child welfare visiting, and the time has arrived when
the appointment of additional health visiting staff must be
considered. During 1930, 8,156 home visits were paid by
the Health Visitors, and Table XII in the Appendix gives
an analysis of this sphere of our work. It must be remembered
that these visits are not nursing visits, but visits
of instruction and advice in mothercraft.
Welfare Centres.
Five Centres holding six sessions per week are provided
by the Council. At the 31st December, 1930, there was a
total roll attendance of 1,393 individual babies at the
Centres, and the total number of attendances at all Centres
by infants under one year of age was 4,300, and by infants
between the age of one and five years of age, 7,759.
There has been no change in the organisation of these
Centres, and the voluntary workers continue to give invaluable
help.
A total of 7,896 weighings was attained during the
year 1930, making an excess of nearly 600 over the previous
year. Only 15 per cent, mothers failed to have their
babies or toddlers weighed during the year, compared with
17 per cent, failures in the previous year.