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58
MATERNITY AND CHILD WELFARE.
Work of the Health Visitors.
The duties of the Health Visitors are as follows :—
Infant Visiting.—Infants are visited as soon as information
of birth is received either by notification or from the Registrar
of Births and Deaths, and re-visits are made before the end of
the first year and up to school age.
It has not been found necessary to visit systematically all
children between the ages of one and five, as they have been visited
when infants, and many of them are kept under supervision at
the Welfare Centres, or by visits made by the Superintendents of
the Centres. Further opportunities for keeping observation on
these children and their homes occur when visits are made to the
home for some other purpose, as for instance, for a case of infectious
disease. Children known to be unhealthy are visited
regularly.
The re-visits of infants attending the Infant Welfare Centres
are carried out by the Superintendents of the Centres. In six
of the twelve Centres in the Borough the Superintendents are
appointed by the Committees of the Centres and the re-visits
of infants attending these Centres are made by them.
In each of the other six Centres, one of the Health Visitors is
now acting as Superintendent in accordance with the Council's
decision made in 1927 to replace Superintendents appointed by
the Centre Committees with Health Visitors as vacancies occur.
All the re-visits in these six districts are therefore carried out by
the Health Visitors, whether the infants are attending the Centres
or not.
The six Centres where one of the Health Visitors is the Superintendent
are Fairlight Hall, Tooting ; Lynwood Road, Springfield,
Fairfield, Streatham Hill and Putney. In one of these,
namely, Putney, the appointment of a Health Visitor as Super-