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*Died GRAND TOTAL: 404
District Nursing
During the year the major part of the necessary reorganisation was achieved in changing
the system of working from districts outlined on a map, where any one nurse might have patients
of 20 or 30 general practitioners, to attachment to specific practices for the patients on the
lists of those doctors.
The attachments are in groups - twelve groups in all of nurses who are related to groups
of practices (there are over 100 G.Ps). Within each group the nurses stand in for each other for
sickness, holidays, etc. The nurses are finding their work very much more interesting and
stimulating as it relates to one or two doctors whom they get to know well personally rather
than a very large number of doctors, some of whom are little more than a voice on a telephone.
They are also enabled to give a better service because of the efficiency of the system and the
fact that they can see some patients at the doctor's surgery and get immediate advice from him
about them.
Nevertheless the amount of work continues to increase, and supplementation of the
nurses by S.E.Ns for the more routine duties is essential. District nurses are a very loyal
breed and will shoulder great burdens and long hours without the complaints which other staff
would have voiced under much lesser strain.
Social Workers
During the year slow progress was made towards the new structure of social work with
the creation of the post of Principal Social Worker and the setting up at the end of the year of
the first Area Team of Social Workers with its Team Leader and its own support clerk at Hatch
Lane Clinic. In the months which have passed this new structure has proved itself and we
wait now with impatience until we can set up the other three teams which will establish a
framework within which the new Social Services Department can launch itself on modern lines.
The team concept means a blurring of the old rigid lines of specialism in blindness,
old age, mental illness, etc., which exist due to the historical development of the social
services, though special skills are still required (e.g. teaching braille or understanding
schizophrenia) and will always call for some specialist social workers. The greater flexibility
means that staff can help each other and thus economise on their time and their resources of
special skills while developing mutual trust. The greater professionalism, which is being fed
in by the ever increasing proportion of staff who have been trained, also means that staff time
is used to much greater advantage. It does not mean that the staff are any less full of human
compassion as is sometimes feared, but that human compassion is steered productively by
insight into the real causes and solutions of the problems presented.
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