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7
ANNUAL REPORT OF THE MEDICAL OFFICER
OF HEALTH
Health, Welfare & Children's Department,
Hanover House,
Lyon Road,
Harrow, Middlesex.
To His Worship the Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors of the
London Borough of Harrow.
Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have the honour to present my Annual Report on the health and
sanitary conditions of the district and on the health, welfare and children's
services provided by the Borough for the year 1967.
During the year the pattern of amalgamation of services commenced
in 1965 and carried on into 1966 provided much evidence of the benefits
arising from the integration of the various health and social services
provided by the Borough to serve the needs of the community. Criticism
has often been levelled at this idea of integrating community services, the
"theory" being put forward that one service would tend to become
"dominant" and swamp the others. To my mind this is definitely not true
because these services all have a positive part to play and must of necessity
be complementary to one another. Professional jealously or parochialism,
call it what you may, has no place in a combined department and once
this fact is appreciated the benefits of mutual aid and co-operation of one
worker with another of a different discipline soon make themselves
evident and facilitate the common social work task of the department of
assisting people to help themselves.
The once common feature of families being subjected to a spate of
multiple visiting from a series of social workers of different disciplines is
now a thing of the past. This technique only served to bamboozle the
family with conflicting advice or, on the other hand, provided a golden
opportunity for a particular family to play one worker off against another.
The ease of consultation between the sections within the department and
the resulting quick decision on a certain defined course of action by one
particular social work group has made itself abundantly evident since
April 1965 with, I think it can be truly said, much quicker action, better
results and a definite saving in professional staff time which of course can
then be applied to other problems.
Consideration of the vital statistics for 1967 shows the normal
variations seen from year to year. There was a population decrease of 530
to a figure of 208,200 and a birth and death rate practically the same as
1966—there being a 0.2 decrease in the birth rate and a 0.1 increase in the
death rate. There was an increased infant mortality rate of 17.0 per 1,000
live births comparing with a figure for England and Wales of 18.3. There