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The two "agency" services both operate from well equipped and adequately staffed
nurses' homes; the Council's own directly administered service suffers from the handicap
of having no settled headquarters. No definable building was available at the "appointed
day" which could provide residential accommodation and the service operates by the courtesy
of the Hospital Management Committee from a room in a war damaged building which has been
improvised to form a combined office and district room. The inconvenience of this
arrangement, as much to the Hospital Management Committee as to the Council, has been
accepted as the means of keeping the headquarters of the service in the district where it
operates.

Most of the part-time staff are married women with home commitments which limit the
flexibility of the hours during which they can be available. Consequently, service at the
week-ends and even in late afternoons, has to be restricted to the barest essentials in this
zone of the Borough: no night service can be operated by these nurses at all.
Requests for the home nurses' services come mainly from the hospitals and general
practitioners. Co-ordination between the two, when both are concerned with the care of the
same patient, does not automatically flow, and an attempt was accordingly made to devise a
scheme whereby the hospitals would make their recommendations for calling in the home nurse
through the patient's general practitioner. It soon became apparent that the rigid applica
tion of such arrangements, irrespective of circumstances, would not always make for prompt
and efficient operation of the service and a good deal of latitude had to be allowed for the
intervention of common sense. Final Judgement is still suspended.