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Health education is given regularly in personal interviews with mothers at home
and at the welfare centres, and this remains a most acceptable and effective means of
offering guidance. Other techniques, however, have their uses, though they are not so
easy to acquire or to apply. Many of the talks to groups of mothers have been outside
the clinic sessions to "ready-made" audiences such as the Nursery School Association,
Parent-Teacher Association, Church Groups and the Mothers Club at Plaistow Maternity
Hospital at the invitation of the matron. This is a club to which the mothers who have
been confined in Plaistow Maternity Hospital may go with their children. Meetings are
held weekly, and about 20 mothers usually attend with children of various ages. In
co-operation with a committee of mothers, the health visitors from Balaam Street Clinic
have organised a series of talks, demonstrations and films. The minding of the children
in a way which will allow the mothers to pay full attention to the group is presenting
a problem which has already arisen in connection with similar activities at our own
centres.
It is not easy for the recently qualified health visitor, intent on getting to
know the families in her district and absorbed in the daily round of her new profession
with its ever widening field, to give talks or lead discussions. The more senior health
visitor, particularly if she has had the advantage of attending one of the parentcraft
courses organised by the Nursing Associations, or one of the special courses organised by
the Central Council for Health Education, is able to undertake this work with greater
confidence. It is this side of the work, therefore, which is one of the first to suffer
through lack of experienced Health Visitors. There is no doubt that the health education
undertaken by the health visitors would be more effective if it were part of a general
programme planned from year to year by the Health Department for application throughout
the borough.
It would be particularly helpful if they could be fed at regular intervals with
information on local circumstances and statistics (such as the causes of local accidents
occurring in the borough) or of demonstration material prepared to meet local needs.
None of the existing staff can spare the time to do this consistently, though many noble
efforts have been made from time to time.
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