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this has been necessary. Home Helps for confinement at home are
not provided unless,there is someone able to be with the mother
after the home help has left each day—if this is not available other
provision for the confinement being recommended, and made where
necessary.
In domestic help cases it is usual to send help for units of two
hours, as nearly as possible as often as requested. When the number of
cases requiring such help is large, the amount of time available to
each case is rationed, so that all cases get some help so far as practicable
and subject to priority of urgency and necessity.
From inception it has been the practice to treat the theoretically
separate Home Help and Domestic Help services as one—utilising
the Home Helps for domestic work when not engaged on confinement
cases and the Domestic Helps for confinement cases in emergencies.
For record purposes details of the different types of cases are kept
separately.
The six occasions during 1946 when it was necessary to refuse to
supply Home Helps, resulted from expected dates of confinements
occurring at periods when there was more than a normal number of
confinements, and the Home Helps had already been booked for other
cases. Such occasions are bound to occur in any scheme owing to
the uncertainty of dates of confinements, and the fact that confinements
are not evenly distributed throughout any year, but bound to be larger
at certain periods, varying from year to year.
The Council has been fortunate in the home and domestic helps
employed and in only one case has there been made a complaint by
a recipient of the service. In this case the complaints were nebulous,
and upon investigation appeared to be without foundation. Many
appreciative letters or verbal thanks for the given assistance have
been received throughout the period of the scheme.
In the case of domestic helps it is noticeable that most applicants
are families who had been used to domestic help in the home before
the war—the poorer families in the district who have had to make do
without domestic help through financial difficulties throughout their
lives and for whom, no doubt, such a provision would be highly
desirable, usually do not apply for help, and in any case the method
of assessment of contributions towards the cost of the service almost
invariably makes it necessary to request payment at the full rate,
i.e., at 2/- an hour which results in financial difficulty to many families
of moderate means.
In July, 1946, as a result of Ministry of Health Circular 110/46,
the Domestic Help and Home Help services were amalgamated under
the title " Home Helps Service." The number of home helps