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71
HEALTH VISITING SERVICE
(Section 24)
The main work of the health visitor in the welfare centre and the home is
well known and is concerned with the maintenance of health and well-being of
each member of the family from the youngest to the oldest.
Health visitors receive a great many telephone calls from parents, almoners,
family doctors and others during the year. This direct and harmonious interchange
between those concerned shows how much team work has advanced in
recent years. The majority of these calls are requests for home visits, for advice
or reports of one kind or another. Requests also come in for early visits to
those being admitted or discharged from hospitals. Visits of this kind are
increasing and give the health visitor an opportunity to prevent or relieve distress
and provide a firm intermediate link between patients, their homes and hospitals.
Local hospitals have provided medical reports this year on the condition of
aged persons discharged from hospital and these have been of considerable help
to health visitors in making the follow-up home visits.
In the field of mental health a worth while experiment resulted from a talk
given in March 1958 by Dr. J.C. Sawle-Thomas, Regional Psychiatrist to the North
East Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board and Consultant Psychiatrist to the
Prince of Wales's General Hospital, to members of the medical and health visiting
staff on 'The implications of the Royal Commission Report on Mental Health".
He made a plea for closer co-operation between hospital and local authority
services.
Later arrangements were made for a monthly case discussion session for
health visitors in the psychiatric department at the Prince of Wales's General
Hospital at which health visitors presented cases known to them of early signs
of mental breakdown.
It was not intended that the Consultant should see any patient who might
be the subject of the case conference, except by referral from the family doctor,
and no person concerned was asked to attend while the case was under discussion.
The purpose of such case conferences is to assist health visitors to obtain
a fuller understanding of mental health and methods by which health visitors can
more adequately assist individuals and families: and are particularly helpful
where families find it difficult to cope with a mentally sick adult or one nearing
breakdown living at home.
The first case conference was held in the late afternoon of 2nd June and at