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thus she is unwelcome when she visits children after an
operation, or babies fourteen days old. One cannot avoid
all visiting on wet days, there are some visits which must
be done whatever the state of the weather, and these are
usually the kind which requires a health visitor to be at her
best. I cannot fail to think that in many homes we are
very unwelcome visitors on wet days, and, for my own part,
I never go in on those days as I feel that the harm I should
do would far exceed the good derived from my advice."
Hayes and Keston Area.
Miss Rhodes reports: My visiting area comprises
Hayes and Keston. Hayes is a typical instance of a
housing estate imposed upon an existing village. This
leads to two different types of visiting, one to the older
resident who in the main is content to live as his forebears
lived, and the other, to the new resident building up a new
home, and in the process anxious to receive all possible help
and instruction. Many of the latter being new to their
environment seek contact with their neighbours through
the welfare centre and through the health visitor, so that
their response to visiting has been an exceedingly pleasing
me and their attendance at the welfare centres regular.
One finds them versed in babycraft gained from the reading
of many periodicals and papers, but their knowledge
befogged by excessive paper advice, and it is to these cases
that I find my visiting of value and appreciated.
Keston is somewhat different, for here we have quite
a number of non-visiting homes, some middle class, and
some rather poor, but on the whole the area responds well
to visiting. Good attendances are made at the centres in
spite of the distance for most of the mothers.
find many of the old fashioned type among the poorer
class, who believe that because they themselves had, for
example, bow legs when young, the child must of necessity
be the same, but "will grow out of it."
I find in visiting the better class homes that they are
very grateful for visits, and seek the advice we are able to
give, once they realise that the visit is in no way an
inquisitorial one.