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of the head teacher or where there are grounds for suspecting
the presence of infestation. During the year the school
nurses carried out 23,862 examinations and found lice or
their eggs in the hair of 237 individual pupils. Today there
is no excuse for such infestation and the infested pupils are
usually members of a hard core of families on whom neither
persuasion nor threats seem to have any effect. In most
cases the parents deal with the matter as soon as their
attention is drawn to it, but 19 formal notices requiring the
parent to cleanse the child had to be issued, and in 14 cases
where the parent had failed to respond to the formal notice
a cleansing order was issued for the pupil to be dealt with
by the school nurses.
Foot Inspections
School nurses make regular foot inspections to duscover the
presence of plantar warts and other contagious skin
conditions of the feet. During the year 6,164 foot
inspections were carried out and 131 new cases of plantar
warts and 12 cases of re-infection were found.
Medical Treatment
Certain treatment facilities continue to be provided under
arrangements made by the local education authority and
parents may use these or seek treatment otherwise under
the National Health Service. The following notes refer to
the treatment facilities provided as part of the school health
service. School clinics are listed on page 90 of the report.
Minor Ailment Clinics
These are staffed by nurses and are held at clinic premises
each morning to treat slight injuries, skin infections and
minor defects of eye or ear.
School Consultation Clinics
These are staffed by a medical officer and regular sessions
are held at the various clinic premises. Parents are free to
take their children for advice on any condition and pupils
may be referred by head teachers, school nurses and others.
These sessions also provide facilities for the follow-up of
conditions found at periodic and special inspections. Where
active treatment is required, the pupils are referred to their
own doctors or specialist clinics as most of the work done
by the medical officer is advisory, educational or supportive.
Ophthalmic Clinics
The vision of entrants is tested during the first year at
school and is repeated at ages seven, eleven and fifteen
years. When an eye disease, squint or defect of sight is
found parents may use the facilities of our ophthalmic clinics
where refraction is carried out by ophthalmic surgeons
seconded from the Regional Hospital Board. A total of
21 71 children were seen at these clinics during the year and
spectacles were prescribed for 497 pupils.
The examination of the vision of spastic and other
children with severe physical handicaps requires special care
and an ophthalmic surgeon visits Martindale School for the
physically handicapped approximately once a month during
term time. Some of these pupils also need special training
to make the best use of their vision and the services of an
orthoptist are also available.
Second pairs of glasses are provided for those children
whose vision is considered by the ophthalmic surgeon likely
to suffer damage if they were without glasses for any period.
Orthopaedic Clinics
These clinics are staffed jointly by the Regional Hospital
Board who provide the orthopaedic surgeons and the local
authority who employ the physiotherapists. Two clinics
are held in the borough, one at Brentford Health Centre
where Mr. I D Archibald attends monthly from West
Middlesex Hospital and the other at Hounslow Health
Centre where Mr. J M Kingsmill Moore attends monthly
from Hounslow Hospital.
259 children were seen by the orthopaedic surgeons
during the year and 94 children required treatment by
physiotherapists at council clinics. In addition to
attendances made at the Brentford and Hounslow clinics, a
physiotherapists attends Busch House School daily to
provide treatment for children suffering from asthma,
bronchitis, cystic fibrosis and other conditions.
A physiotherapist also attends twice weekly at the
Marjory Kinnon School for educationally subnormal pupils
because of the number of children with additional
physical disabilities who are admitted to this school.
Speech Therapy
Throughout 1971 the speech therapy service was under
great pressure due to staff shortage combined with new
demands for speech therapists' time. No new developments
took place and no additional duties were undertaken, such
as the surveys of 1969 - 1970.
At the beginning of the year one replacement speech
therapist joined the borough, but the second, needed to
complete the establishment, did not commence her duties
until September 1971.
The most noticeable feature of the year has been the
steady growth of interest in speech and laguage in a wide
range of professions. Speech and langauge are increasingly
recognised as playing a fundamental part in the growth of
intelligence, educational ability, social relationships and
emotional well-being. Therefore teachers in all types of
schools, doctors, and educational psychologists, are
requesting the speech therapists' to examine children to
report on any abnormality of speech and language
development, together with suggestions for therapeutic
training. In particular there has been a formal and urgent
request for far more speech therapy for educationally sub
normal and severely sub-normal children, and for the
attendance of a speech therapist at the day nurseries,
autistic unit, class for children with learning disabilities,
School for the Deaf and partial-hearing nursery. Thus the
role of the speech therapist is changing from purely
administering individual therapy in the clinic or school to a
wider consultative and advisory role. This is welcomed
since it provides the opportunity to help more children, and
frequently prevents the occurrence of social and emotional
difficulties associated with the anxieties and frustrations of
failure in speech and language.
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