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Home Helps.
The Home Help Scheme continues to function satisfactorily
and has been appreciated by the many mothers who have received
help from the Council in this way. The Home Help—a woman
usually chosen by the patient subject to approval as a suitable
person by the Health Visitor—attends at the home from the date
of confinement and for fourteen days thereafter. As the duties
of such a woman are purely domestic, she may be employed
whether the patient is confined in hospital or at her own home.
It is an infringement of the Home Help rules if the woman in
any way undertakes the nursing of the mother or baby or undertakes
any of the duties, at the confinement, of a trained nurse.
An expectant mother, indeed, is not eligible for such help unless
she has engaged a trained nurse to attend her at her confinement
cither as a midwife or in conjunction with a doctor.
The supervision of these Home Helps is carried out by the
Municipal Health Visitors: each suggested Home Help is visited
in her own home before being approved by the Health Visitor, and
if approved, is handed a printed list of her duties. She is required
to notify the Medical Officer of Health not later than the day
following the confinement, in order that the Health Visitor may
get in touch with the case at an early date. The Health Visitor
visits the home of the lying-in woman several times during the
14 days to supervise the work of the Home Help.
The assistance which this scheme gives to the poorer working
class mothers produces immense benefit: it affords the patient
herself an opportunity of longer convalescence: it ensures her
peace of mind, for she realises that her children are not neglected
and that the household duties are carried on as if she herself were
not for the time being laid aside.
During 1933:—
Total number of applications for Home Helps, 1116. Of this
number 922 were eligible, 154 were ineligible (i.e., did not fall
within the Council's scheme as regards income).
In 40 cases the applications were cancelled by the applicants.
Suspension of Midwives practising in the Borough.
The Supervisor of Midwives in the Borough is the Senior
Assistant Medical Officer for Maternity and Child Welfare (Dr.
Helen Campbell).
Most of the Midwives practice under the aegis of one of
several training schools or Midwives' Associations in the neighbourhood,
and therefore are also under constant supervision by
those authorities. There is no doubt that a factor largely contri-
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