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DEVELOPMENT OF THE HEALTH SERVICES
PLAN FOR THE TEN YEARS FROM 1966 TO 1976
The first ten year plan produced in the light of local circumstances and needs has been
prepared in pursuance of the Ministry of Health Circular 14/65 dated 30 July 1965 in reference to
the plans made by the former London County Council in 1962 and 1963 and the reassessment of
the needs for local health services consequent on the coming into effect of the London Government
Act, 1963, in the area comprising the former Metropolitan Boroughs of Hampstead, Holborn and
St. Pancras.
It was extremely difficult to project health and social services ten years ahead, especially
against the pressure of immediate tasks. For this reason it is more than likely that subsequent
revisions of the Plan for Camden will present considerable variations.
The estimate of population rests basically on the Registrar General's mid-1964 estimate.
The effects of migration, changes in the birth rate and the rate of increase of the population aged
65 years and over, which must affect any long range estimate of needs for local health services may
be more apparent when the results of the 1966 Census are available; they may well point the need
for a revision of current proposals.
As time goes on our planning will become more exact, especially as the Borough is to
co-operate with the Social Research Unit at Bedford College headed by Mrs. Margot Jefferys and
with the Medical Unit of University College Hospital Medical School under Sir Max Rosenheim
in a comprehensive survey of the need of the borough for social and medical services.
The plans outlined below have already in part been implemented and details have been
given In the earlier pages of this Report. What has been achieved is, however, in some cases only
a small part of what is proposed and the following summary of the Ten Year Plan is intended to
supplement the information which has already been given.
CO-OPERATION WITH HOSPITALS AND GENERAL PRACTITIONERS
The London Boroughs are the first local health authorities to be newly formed, since the
National Health Service Act, 1946 came into force. After 17 formative years of the Service during
which hospital, general practitioner and local health services developed very much in isolation
from each other, there is now an unique opportunity of planning on a much more comprehensive
basis. The appointment of a Consultant Psychiatrist who will serve University College and Friem
Hospitals, and act as my Adviser in pyschiatric community care, and the appointment of a lecturer
at the Royal Free Hospital Medical School who will also be a senior assistant medical officer in
the Borough's Health Department are only two of many examples of planned co-operation with our
local hospitals.
Co-operation with general practitioners is to be fostered by the establishment of health
centres wherever sites become available and where our colleagues in general practice welcome
such a scheme. Attachments of local health authority staff to general practices are progressing.
FAMILY HEALTH CLINICS
Within the public health service itself, too, the orientation is changing. Some 60 years
ago maternity and child welfare centres were developed - one of the very first in what is now
Camden - as a life saving measure to combat an infant mortality which had not fallen in spite of
considerable advances in environmental hygiene. The school health service started soon after, as
a direct result of the disturbing evidence of gross unfitness of our young people which came to
light during the recruitment of volunteers for the Boer War.
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