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5.
To the Chairman and Members of the
Walthamstow Committee for Education.
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have the honour to present the Annual School Health
Report for 1960. It has a slightly different format from
that of previous years. Hie first section is a narrative
report of a few activities of the School Health Service
and the remainder statistical. Where there is no
appreciable change in the extent and nature of the work of
the department to that of previous years then it is
included in the statistical section. For those with a
flair for reading statistics this section is a mine of
information. It tabulates the enormous amount of work
carried out during the year. If any aspect is not
reported upon it does not indicate that it is not worthy
of comment or unimportant, but merely that there has been
no change from that of previous years, thus avoiding
repetition of the legend.
A total of 8,938 medical inspections was carried out
during the year and in spite of the interference with the
programme caused by the diphtheria outbreak this figure
is only a little below that for a normal year. The
proportion of children whose physical condition or
development were unsatisfactory continued to fall. Apart
from specific defects the percentage classified as
unsatisfactory was only 0.4 per cent of the total
examined. This maintains the trend of recent years
(1957 - 1. 8%; 1958 0. 9the continued improvement in the physical health of our
children.
Attendances at the school clinics have been somewhat
reduced in numbers but, as Dr. Poole points out
under Mental Health, a large proportion of the children
seen are suffering from nervous and emotional disorders
and require much longer consultations than is usual with
purely physical defects. All the Specialist Clinics
have continued to do excellent work and, with the
exception of the Child Guidance Clinic, there is no
waiting list at any of them.
The position is not so satisfactory with the School
Dental Service, however. During the year we lost the
services of two full-time Dental Officers, leaving only
two, and it has proved imnossible to recruit full-time
officers to replace them. We have the equivalent of
approximately three full-time against an establishment
of nine whole-time officers.