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healthy babies to the centres to get them weighed and to learn
how to keep them healthy. They bring difficult and ailing
babies in order to get assistance in putting them right. Sick
children come who require treatment by a practitioner or at a
hospital, and these are referred to them at an earlier stage
than used to be the case. Expectant mothers come to get
advice about their own health and about the preparations for
baby. More rational methods of clothing and feeding baby
are gradually being brought into use.
It is, in the main, to these causes, which are not entirely local
but part of a general movement throughout the country,
that the improvement in infant health is to be attributed.
Details of the maternity and child welfare scheme under
appropriate heads are given in the following pages.
(a) Notification of Births Acts, 1907-1915. These Acts
place an obligation on the parents, the midwife or the doctor
attending, to notify a birth to the Medical Officer of Health
within 36 hours of birth. In this way over 97 per cent. of
births occurring in this Borough come to the knowledge of
the Department within that time. Each morning, as soon as
these notifications are received, as a matter of routine, literature
dealing with the care and comfort of mothers and infants
is sent by post to every mother. The health visitor makes
her first visit to such homes as it is deemed desirable, between
the tenth and fourteenth day and is guided by her experience,
then gained, as to the necessity for subsequent visits, but as a
general rule she works to the following standard: three visits
during the first year, one visit in each subsequent year up to
the age of five years. In the case of infants who are born in
the Borough whose usual address is elsewhere, copies of the