View report page

come their resistance to attempts at improvement
Maternity and emergency cases always
receive priority Tuberculous households are
assisted by selecting or inviting volunteers
from among home helps who have no young
children of the own
Night help service
Night helps were provided for seriously ill
persons who were without relatives or
friends to assist them
Neighbourly help
Some old people can manage, provided they
have help with lighting fires shopping and
being settled in to bed at night if there is a
neighbour willing to do this regularly and
also keep a friendly eye on them Neighbourly
helps are appointed for this purpose and
paid for this service and at the end of the year
twelve were so employed
The number of home helps employed varies
from day to day and at the end of the year the
whole-time equivalent employed was 139
Two thousand and sixty six homes were
served by home helps during the year an
increase of 33 totalling 302 939 hours
Section 13 of the Health Services and
Public Health Act 1968 imposes the duty
on local health authorities to provide or arrange
to provide a home help service It replaces the
existing permissive power to provide this
service under Section 29 of the National Health
Service Act 1946 and empowers local health
authorities to make available laundry facilities
as a part of the service
Staff training
The series of in-service training courses which
were introduced last year continued Each course
comprises six two hour weekly classes and enables
staff to acquire training to cope in particular with
the speical problems arising in the care of the aged
nursing mothers and problem families Each course
consists of lectures discussions films and
demonstrations relating to the duties of a home help
in the various domestic circumstances she is likely
to encounter
Residential home helps
The establishment committee authorised the appointment
of two residential home helps who would be
available to take over the care of children in their
own homes during brief domestic crises thus
avoiding reception into care but by the end of the
year it had not been possible to recruit suitable
staff for this purpose
Prevention of illness - care and after-care Section 28
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis prevention care and after-care services
for patients living at home are provided at the
Hounslow and Ashford Chest Clinics
During 1968 there were 66 formal notifications of
pulmonary tuberculosis and 22 of non-pulmonary
tuberculosis compared with 81 and 21 notifications
respectively in 1967
The total number of cases on the register at the
end of the year was 1839 (pulmonary - males 870
females 694 non-pulmonary - males 114 females
161)
Table 13 shows an analysis of all cases notified
during 1968
There were 7 deaths from tuberculosis in 1968
Future of the Chest Service
In 1960 the Standing Tuberculosis Advisory Committee
considered the future of the chest services and their
advice was endorsed by the Central Health Services
Council A survey arranged by the Ministry of Health
in 1964 showed that the committee s recommendations
were being implemented in varying degrees in
different regions and the Standing Medical Advisory
Committee then decided to establish a sub-committee
31