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46
HEALTH VISITING.
The Council employs fourteen Health Visitors for maternity
and child welfare work, and each of these officers is allotted a district
for visiting purposes. A Midwifery Health Visitor is also
employed for ante-natal work. The Infant Life Protection Visitor
also acts as a relief Health Visitor. Two of the three voluntary
associations providing in the Borough Infant Welfare Centres also
employ Health Visitors, who carry out the health visiting work in
the areas served by those Centres.
Approximately two-thirds of the time of the Borough Council's
Health Visitors is spent in visiting the homes of expectant and
nursing mothers, and children under the age of five years, the
remainder of their time being devoted to attendance at Ante-Natal
and Infant Welfare Centres.
Visits are paid as required to all expectant mothers of whom
knowledge is received through midwives, Ante-Natal Clinics or
other means. There is a scheme of co-operation between the
Borough Council and the London County Council under which
mothers who attend at the Ante-Natal Clinic established at the
Hackney Hospital are notified to the Public Health Department in
order that the Borough Council's Health Visitors might visit the
homes. Women who lapse in their attendance at the Clinic are also
notified to the Public Health Department for the further attention
of the Health Visitors.
The Health Visitors also visit the homes of all infants notified
under the Notification of Births Act, 1907. The first visit is paid
as soon as possible after the infant reaches the age of fourteen days.
Three further routine visits are paid during the first year of life,
and two visits are paid in each subsequent year until the child reaches
the age of five years. Additional visits are paid as required to
infants and children suffering from ophthalmia neonatorum,
measles, whooping cough, etc. It may be said, therefore, that the
Borough is adequately served as regards health visiting.
The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children
has greatly assisted the maternity and child welfare work of the
Council by investigating cases of child neglect brought to its notice.
Mr. Rivers, the Society's local inspector, calls at the Town Hall
once a week for information of any such cases found by the Health
Visitors and through his efforts and authority the conditions under
which some children were living have been greatly improved. In
one case where flagrant neglect existed the parents or guardians were
prosecuted by the Society. The Society has occasionally, upon