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58
Residential Nursery.
The Council had previously agreed on the desirability of a residential
nursery, to which could be admitted for short stay children whose mothers
were temporarily unable to look after them. It was anticipated that
admission would mostly be of children of mothers admitted to hospital
for confinement, or for some other reason. It was accepted that at such
a nursery, mothers with illegitimate children might be admitted for some
weeks until they could look round and make some more permanent
arrangement. The Honeypot Lane Isolation Hospital had had no
patients in since early 1944. The Council had already approached the
Ministry with a view to its being used for the reception of maternity
cases. This proposal was not approved because of the heavy expenditure
of material and labour necessary suitably to adapt the building for this
purpose. The next step, then, was to consider whether the hospital
might not be got ready for adaptation as a residential short-stay nursery.
The position at the end of the year was that the prospect of such an
arrangement being made was encouraging.