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61
SCHOOL HEALTH SERVICE
(by W. H. Toms, M.B., Ch.B. (Edin.).
Principal Medical Officer).
1966 saw the second year of the School Health Service in
the London Borough of Redbridge.
There have been inevitable changes in the service which
may have suggested to some schools that they were in danger
of losing the close contact they had previously enjoyed with
the School Health Service. These changes have largely been
the result of the more centralised administration which a school
population of 31,000 requires. Medical records are now kept
at the Public Health Offices and appointments are made from
there. I should like to thank the teaching staff of those schools
affected by this change for the flexibility and goodwill they
have shown and assure them that while the control of some
administrative functions may have passed from their hands our
aim is to co-operate as fully as we can in the care of the whole
child.
It is our endeavour to offer as full a preventive medical
service as possible to the child in school, and I have been very
pleased that in the last year teachers have called upon us for
advice upon many occasions and on cases as diverse as the
disturbed five year old who could not settle in a large class
and the grammar school pupil whose vision was so impaired he
required not only special seating arrangements but a special
syllabus. I am convinced that there are school children whose
problems require the teacher and doctor to meet personally and
evolve a plan for the child in school. All periodic medical inspections
should present an opportunity for this relationship
and I deplore those which take place away from the school
background and in professional isolation.
At present, with only a few exceptions, school medical
officers are not attached to their own schools. This is a bad
thing. With a greater number of full time departmental medical
officers on our staff it would be possible to devise a scheme
in which one doctor would look after Infant Welfare Centres,
Toddlers Clinics and the school population in a definite area.
He would be able to establish a sound relationship with all
workers in the field of Community Care, including the general
practitioners. He would have identity and his work should have
cohesion. He might even become known by name and not as the
"Clinic Doctor*.