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PUBLIC HEALTH NURSING AND
ALLIED SERVICES
HEALTH VISITING
Staff
At the end of the year, the staff position was:—
1 Superintendent Health Visitor.
1 Deputy Superintendent Health Visitor.
29 Full-time Health Visitors.
2 Part-time Health Visitors.
2 Part-time Geriatric Health Visitors.
1 Full-time Tuberculosis Health Visitor.
2 Part-time Tuberculosis Health Visitors.
3 Student Health Visitors.
Five Health Visitors left the Borough during 1968. Three were
having babies, one left to get married and a fifth retired.
Six full-time Health Visitors started work during the year; two
of these were students sponsored by the Borough, and a third had
done her three months' supervised practice in Mitcham and then
applied to come as a Health Visitor.
Three student Health Visitors started training under Borough
sponsorship in 1968.
A Health Visitor was appointed in 1968 whose main duties are
in the Geriatric field. She joined the team at St. George's Hospital,
Tooting, who work entirely with patients from Merton. The team is
a young one and consists of a Geriatrician, a Social Worker from the
Welfare Department, a Health Visitor, and a Secretary. The Geriatric
Health Visitor visits all referrals and assesses the needs, and then
passes them to the correct channels (Hospital, Local Health Visitor,
Welfare Department, etc.). She also assesses home conditions before
patients are discharged from hospital. The team is proving itself to
be much needed and much used.
The film shows for ante-natal parents developed during 1968
into a series of evening classes in Fathercraft and have proved tremendously
popular. They are run by Health Visitors and Midwives,
and in the case of every ante-natal mother's booking that is received
in the office, an invitation is sent, addressed to both husband and wife.
The response has been sufficient to warrant an increased number of
these series in the future.
Toddlers' Clinics have continued to gain importance in the sphere
of Health Visitors' work. The number of children attending these
sessions in 1968 has almost doubled over those of the previous year,
and the number of sessions has also increased. An endeavour has been
made to have Toddler Sessions near home, and, therefore, Church
halls as well as purpose-built Clinics are being used for this purpose.
As is the current trend, the emphasis is on the early assessment and
developmental progress of the child, both at Child Health Centres and
Toddlers' Clinics.
A determined effort is being made by Assistant Medical Officers
and Health Visitors to dispel the fixed idea in many mothers' minds,
that the Child Health Centres are mainly for weighing babies. They
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