View report page

61
In consequence of the appointment, at the beginning of 1937, of
an additional health visitor and a female clerk for maternity and
child welfare purposes, the number of home-visits made increased
from 5,198 visits during the year 1936 to 7,710 visits during 1937.
The number of home-visits made by the health visitors during 1938
was 7,950.
MATERNITY AND CHILD WELFARE CENTRES.
During 1938 ante-natal clinics have continued to be held twice
monthly; clinics for infant consultations have been held twice weekly
at the Essex House Maternity and Child Welfare Centre.
The number of attendances at this Centre, which had increased
during the year 1937, continued to be so large during 1938 as to cause
a degree of overcrowding, both at the Ante-natal and the Infantwelfare
Clinics, which tended to inefficiency in the work. Fortunately
soon after the end of the year, on the completion of the New Health
Centre at North Worple Way, Mortlake, it became possible to transfer
half of the work to that Centre. Early in the present year, March,
1939, it was arranged for four Infant-welfare sessions per week and
four Ante-natal sessions per month to be held, the mothers and infants
from the Barnes parish attending at the Essex House Centre and
those from the Mortlake parish attending the clinics held at the
North Worple Way Centre.
Ante-Natal Clinic.
During the year 146 mothers attended at the clinic; amongst
these 126 were expectant mothers who attended as new cases and 2
were post-natal cases. The number of attendances made by the
mothers at the clinics was 348.
Attendances, subsequent to the preliminary consultation and
examination, for further observation and advice were made regularly
by most of those expectant mothers who were not already under
supervision by a medical practitioner or midwife.
The number of expectant mothers who attended the Council's
Ante-natal Clinics represented 37.4 per cent. of the total notified
births for the year. In addition to those expectant mothers who
attended at the Council's Clinic there were 24 mothers, who had
booked their confinements at Hospitals, or Maternity Hospitals,
and attended the Ante-natal Clinics of those institutions; this
corresponds to a further 6.2 per cent. of the total births in which
mothers, not under ante-natal supervision by doctors or midwives,
attended at an ante-natal clinic, equalling a total of 43.6 per cent,
under ante-natal clinic supervision.