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The administration of the home nursing service is one of the functions
for which the local Area Committee is responsible. The superintendent
of the home nurses is Mrs. R. Bromley, who works from the Area Health
Office at "Kynaston Court."
Nursing Equipment: The County Council in exercising its powers to
make available nursing equipment on loan to patients being nursed at
home have used the services of the Middlesex Branch of the British Red
Cross Society. The Red Cross depot in this area is at 9 Peterborough
Road.
Midwifery and Maternity Nursing
The local midwifery service provided by the Harrow Council under
the Midwives Act, 1936, passed in 1948 into the hands of the Middlesex
County Council. This is one of the services administered locally by the
local Area Committee.
Before the war, of the 3,000 births each year to Harrow mothers,
about 1,000 were attended by the local authority midwives acting either
as midwives or as maternity nurses. Partly because of the fall in the
number of births and also because of the greater proportion of confinements
now taking place in institutions, the number of home confinements
in any year is appreciably less. The number of midwives needed for this
service then is less, and the establishment has been reduced to eleven.
This is based on the accepted standard that a midwife working on her
own can attend 55 patients and one who has a pupil 75. While in ordinary
conditions this provision is adequate and allows for a certain amount of
absence for illness and for holiday absence, there is no reserve when one
or more of the midwives is absent for long periods through illness. Added
to that is the greater difficulty when, as is now the case, there is a long
interval between the resignation of one midwife and the engagement ot
her successor. The administration of the service then becomes very
difficult and it is a trial to the reduced number of midwives actually on
duty.
Most of the midwives live in their own homes and the districts which
they cover is as far as possible based on those points as centres. The work
of the midwives is co-ordinated by the non-medical supervisor of midwives,
Mrs. R. Bromley of 213 Exeter Road, South Harrow (Telephone No.:
PINNER 5723).
Last year the midwives attended the confinements of 745 women in
their homes, being present in 629 instances as midwives and in 116 as
maternity nurses. Of these mothers confined in their own homes, 556
had the advantage of gas and air analgesia, 273 of pethidine and 200 of
trilene.
Home Helps
This service had its beginnings as part of the Maternity and Child
Welfare arrangements by which help was sent in to those households
where a mother was being confined at home. During the war, because
the special difficulties which followed on women being engaged war
work and being therefore not available to look after those suffering from
relatively minor illnesses, who in ordinary circumstances could be nursed