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SECTION 25: HOME NURSING.
Municipal Home Nursing Staff on 31st December 1951*
1 S.C.M. employed full time.
8 S.R.N. ) employed part time,
7 S.E.A.N.) average 21 hours weekly.

The agency arrangements whereby the portion of the Borough north of the District
Railway and a smaller area in the south (Silvertown) are supplied with Home Nurses by the
Beachcroft Nurses' Training Home (administered by the Essex County Council) and the Tate
Nurses (Silvertown & North Woolwich District Nursing Association) respectively, have
continued throughout the year and have remained satisfactory.
The larger area south of the District Railway and north of the Docks is catered for
by the Council's own nursing staff. While the above table shows that the staff at the end
of 1951 was greater than at the end of 1950, this number has fluctuated considerably throughout
the year.
Recruitment of full-time Home Nurses is difficult at present, and in West Ham the
difficulty is accentuated by the lack of provision of any residential accommodation or of
suitable premises for the nurses to use for the cleaning and storing of their equipment
and for their clerical work. With one exception the service is at the moment entirely
dependent on the part-time work of married women, many of whom have heavy domestic commitments
and live some distance from the Borough. Though these nurses have given devoted and
willing service for which the patients and their relatives have frequently expressed deep
appreciation, and although the staff at Plaistow Maternity Hospital have kindly continued
to take and pass on telephone messages, the uncertainties of the situation have given much
anxiety to those who administer the service.
With the staff much below establishment,,the failure to recruit full time nurses, and
the increasing demands for the nursing of the sick in their own homes, it has not been possible
to give the public the service which would be considered adequate, and it has been necessary to
restrict the times at which the service has been available.
In this setting, it was rather disappointing that financial stringency compelled the
elimination of the proposed District Nurses' Home and Headquarters from the building programme
for 1951 after it had been approved by the Ministry. The scheme offered the prospect of
providing a focus around which a well-organised, comprehensive home nursing service could be
built. The need is still great, but it is hoped that the project has been postponed rather
than abandoned.
SECTION 26: VACCINATION AND IMMUNISATION
See page 6.
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