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the people, for the supervision of hygienic production, importation and handling of food,
so as to prevent dirty or diseased food causing disorder or disease to the people. These
services were disrupted neither by War nor by the National Health Services Act.
But the Maternity and Child Welfare Services and the School Health Service, which
had continued triumphantly and successfully through the War years in spite of air-raids,
limited amount of time in Winter because of black-out requirements, and need of staff to
carry out supplementary duties of many kinds because of the demands of War, were shattered
by the impact of the new legislation. While parents were still ready and anxious to
take their children to be treated for abnormalities of health to general practitioners, hospitals,
or even to local health authority clinics, that wish, carefully cultivated by devoted
Health Visitors through the years, to have attention and advice about healthy children to
prevent disability or disease, became limited to the more devoted mothers only, particularly
when Health Visitors became scarce because of lack of training facilities, and the
creation of too many supervisory grades. Ante-Natal Clinics where expectant mothers had
been used to attend as often as they liked, and by appointment weekly during the final
two months of their pregnancies, and which were combined with Mothercraft training,
talks and tea meetings, where also the midwives could meet their patients, faded out, and
the expectant mothers either travelled several miles to hospital clinics, or visited their
private doctors, two or three times during the whole of their pregnancies. Whereas in
1945, to take a year at random, out of 547 ante-natal mothers attending the ante-natal
clinic 276 came on more than 6 or more occasions.
The fourth clinic which was already designed for Northcote Avenue as a two-storey
building for later expansion, became a bungalow building replacing one of the existing
three clinics, and the fifth clinic was never built in Norwood Green.
The Clinic Service began to recover after some years, and started again to attract
keen young Health Visitors, who have been doing very fine work particularly with the new
immigrant population.
The use of voluntary helpers was a feature of our old service, there was a special
Association of Clinic Workers. They were absolutely discouraged in the new regime of
1948, but lately increasing use appears to be made by the County Council of W.V.S.
helpers, whose presence in the clinics makes for friendliness. There should be a vast number
of potential voluntary workers in Ealing, women with nothing to do, and men newly
retired from active life, but they need stimulating (and I think this is the duty of the Medical
Officer of Health). It was with some astonishment that I learnt that the Old People's Welfare
Committee which we founded from the Ealing Branch of the Red Cross soon after
the War, faded away, presumably through lack of helpers—it could not be through lack
of work to do—and that in recent years efforts have been made to get a committee working
on Southall Old People's Welfare Committee lines.
And now for the future. At last the Public Health Department is to be responsible
for the whole service, Environmental and Personal and, unless mistakes are made, at
least partly responsible for Welfare and the Children's Services. Here is the opportunity
to make atonement for the wasted years, and to make a department in London which can
reach the high standards of Preston, Bristol, Newcastle and other excellent provincial
towns, which have had the good fortune to retain the unified control of the Public Health
Service throughout.
Administration must be personal, decentralized and helpful. There must be no more
passing of enquiries from poor distressed citizens, who, after all, have to pay for the service,
from one department to another. Every member of every section of the Health Department
should be willing to try to find the right person to answer any problem, and the repellent
words "Sorry, I cannot help you" should be forbidden.
The Sanitary Inspection service should continue, as now, to be immediately available
to callers with problems of housing, or nuisance, and to maintain good environmental
conditions, the safety of food and water, and the control and prevention of epidemic
diseases.
The Clinics should be brought up to the former standards (and those Clinics situated
in the other parts of the new Borough, i.e. Ealing and Acton, should be elevated to the
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