View report page

TO THE CHAIRMAN AND MEMBERS OF THE
EDUCATION COMMITTEE.
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I beg to submit herewith the Annual Report on the School
Medical Service for the year 1932.
In spite of the economic conditions causing distress in the
Borough, the health of the children has not been allowed to
suffer. In the vast child population of West Ham there must
of necessity be a considerable amount of ill health, and of
children needing special consideration, though the primary object
of the School Medical Service is that of prevention rather than
of cure.
In several of my previous Reports I have included tables
which show the progressively high standard of physical fitness.
It is significant to note that in the year 1928, out of two hundred
and twenty-nine children examined with a view to admission into
a Special School, eighty-two were found to need training in a
School for Mental Defectives, and fifty-three in a School for
Physically Defective Children, whereas in the year under review,
one hundred and ninety-one cases were so examined, of whom
only twenty-seven were found to require treatment at a Special
School for Mental Defectives, and as few as twenty-one at a
School for Physically Defective Children.
There is, however, a percentage of children, who though
not sufficiently backward or defective to need admission into one
or the other of the special schools mentioned, still, in my opinion,
require some form of training other than that obtainable in an
ordinary elementary school.
In a Memorandum which I submitted to the Education Committee
in November, 1929, amongst other proposals, I suggested
a special school for such cases. The majority of this type of
child, though able to carry on in a fairly normal way during school
life with parental protection and the aid of the Teacher, are unable
properly to fend for themselves in after life, and eventually become,
in some form or other, a charge to the community.
The work of the Open Air Schools and of the Nursery Schools
continues to be of invaluable help in maintaining the health of
the weakly and of the younger children.
The many social services ancillary to and concomitant with
the School Medical Service are of inestimable value in the strenuous
activities of this Authority so to bring up the children that
they mav become healthy, useful and contented citizens.
Your obedient Servant,
School Medical Officer.
Municipal Health Offices,
Romford Road,
Stratford, E.15.
June, 1933.
143