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39
MATERNITY AND CHILD WELFARE CENTRES
Melmoth Hall, Eustace Road, was given up as a clinic when the new institution at Parsons
Green became available; and the Eustace Road patients were redistributed over the various clinics
as suited them best.
The new Clinic at Parsons Green was opened on Saturday, 16th October. This Clinic consists
of the greater part of the ground floor of the new Maternity Home building. There is a large waiting
hall (suitable also for social activities, lectures, etc.), with ample accommodation for the different
types of clinic sessions. There is a small kitchen where teas can be made for the mothers. The Free
Church Women's Guild have undertaken to prepare and serve the teas, as in our other clinics, and to
them we are indebted for this further extension of their voluntary work for the Department.
Dried milk is now issued at all the Infant Welfare Centres; and its distribution at the Town
Hall has been discontinued. As all mothers buying milk at cost price must now attend the Centres,
children are brought for medical supervision who might otherwise remain without it. The percentage
of children under the age of one year attending the clinics is still far below what it ought to be ; and
it is evident that a large proportion of those children who do not attend the clinics have no medical
supervision except in illness.
Many mothers still fail to realise the importance of medical supervision for apparently healthy
children. The general practitioner has neither time nor opportunity for this work; whereas, on the
other hand, the clinics are not concerned with the treatment of sick children.
The importance of the supervision of the pregnant and nursing mother is laid stress on by
the Health Visitors and clinic doctors. It is the foundation of all maternity and child welfare work.
In Fulham for many years cards for recording the clinic history of nursing mothers have been specially
filed.
A gynaecological and birth control clinic is held once a week at Greyhound Road.
Sessions for urgent post-natal examinations have been instituted at Parsons Green clinic ;
and a notice urging the importance of after care following childbirth is sent out from the Maternity
and Child Welfare Department whenever a notification of birth is received.
Increasing legislation is continually tending to throw additional work on the clerical and
Health Visiting staffs (which are not always concurrently increased) ; and I again place on record my
deep appreciation of the wholehearted and loyal services of the Health Visiting and clerical staffs.
To our regular voluntary workers also I would here express my appreciation.
Upon the mother depends, in large measure, the contentment and well-being of the family
and at the Centres we lay great emphasis on this point. The presence in the borough of such open
spaces as Eelbrook Common, Parsons Green, the Recreation Ground, South Park and Bishops Park
is in itself an important factor towards this end.
The total attendances at the clinics increased by 1,555, and the first attendances of children
under one year of age represented 58 per cent. of the notified live births.