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Side by side with the foregoing activities the Council have
developed a Home Help Scheme, but from 1939 to 1943, owing to the
war, this scheme was held in abeyance. In 1943 the scheme was
revised for Domestic and Home Helps, the Domestic Helps being provided
to assist in the homes where necessary owing to ill-health or
old age, and Home Helps for expectant mothers.
In 1947, a Nursery Creche with morning and afternoon sessions
for 30 children was opened at 57, White Horse Road. In Novamber
of the same year the Council opened the Mary Hughes Centre and
Nursery at Underwood Road having acquired the property which was
formerly occupied by the Jewish Maternity Hospital and carried out
extensive works of conversion and adaptation. The Council's Day
Nursery at Robt.Montefiore School, Vallance Road and the Infant
Welfare Centre at Hughes tensions, Vallance Road were then both
transferred to these premises.
At the time of the transfer of the Council's maternity and
child welfare powers to the London County Council there are functioning
within the Borough 3 Municipal and 2 Voluntary Day Nurseries;
1 Municipal Creche; 7 Municipal and 1 Voluntary Infant Welfare
Centres and 2 Municipal Ante-Natal Clinics, while the Domestic and
Home Helps service employs 65 Home Helps caring' for approximately
150 cases. In addition, a prefabricated Nursery Hut erected by the
Borough Engineer and Surveyor (see p.15) in the Christian Street area
is nearing completion and will provide Nursery accommodation for 55
children.
Some indication of the measure of success achieved by the Borough
Council's Maternity and Child Welfare Scheme is to be found in the
decrease in infant mortality from 165 per 1,000 live births in 1901
to 27.7 per 1,000 live births in the year ended 1948; in other words
the infant mortality rate has decreased to one-sixth of the rate
recorded 48 years ago. Furthermore the maternal mortality rate
which in 1914 was 3.1 deaths per 1,000 live and still births, having
fluctuated very considerably during the intervening years, has reached
zero this present year.
At its meeting on the 22nd June this year the Borough Council
expressed to all officers and employees of the Council engaged in the
Maternity and Child. Welfare services, and to those about to be transferred
to the London County Council and the Regional Hospital Board,
its appreciation of the loyal and devoted service they had rendered
and the Council's best wishes for their future. success.
I too would like to add my tribute to those officers and employees
of the Maternity and Child Welfare, Tuberculosis and other transferred
services and I hope and feel that under the auspices of the
London County Council and the Regional Hospital Board the personal
Health Services will go forward to still greater successes for the
benefit of the citizens of Stepney.
It remains for me to express my thanks to the Chairman and
members of the Committees for their continued support and interest
(viii)