View report page

96
notified cases of certain infectious diseases (measles, whooping cough,
patients discharged from hospital after scarlet fever, and also cases of
puerperal fever and ophthalmia neonatorum), and in addition each
Health Visitor attends at the Infant Welfare Centres on three afternoons
a week and at the Ante-natal Clinic on one morning in three
weeks. The need for an additional Health Visitor has long been
discussed, and upon the appointment of Miss White to succeed Miss
Baird in the East Ward, when the latter took up the Tuberculosis work,
a new arrangement of the Health Visitors' districts was made. The
object of this reorganisation of the work was to economise distances,
by making the areas worked by Miss Piper and Miss Stowell more
compact, also to equalize the number of births in the six areas, whose
boundaries do not now correspond exactly to the boundaries of the
municipal wards. The main argument in favour of this plan was that
it cost nothing, and it has been to a certain extent successful; but it
does not obviate the fact that each Health Visitor has more work than
can be done thoroughly by one person.
(The Council has kindly recognised this and appointed a parttime
Health Visitor to the Staff.—M.O.H.)
8. The Maternity Home. At the end of the first complete year of
its existence, the Municipal Maternity Home is acclaimed as a great
success by dozens of small, and as yet inarticulate, voices. Many
indeed have been the expressions of appreciation and gratitude from
mothers whose "time of trouble" has been more "like a holiday."
But the supreme vindication of this municipal undertaking is "out of
the mouths of babes and sucklings." It is a recognised fact, at the
Infant Welfare Centres, that there is something distinctive about the
"Home" babies. They are singularly free from all the troubles that
afflict the new baby of an inexperienced mother. The secret lies in the
way they are managed from the beginning. The Home itself should
be, and is, a great educational force; but not only so, the "Home"
mother is ready to learn more herself, and teach others all that will
make for baby's health and well-being.
There were three changes in the Staff, in the earlier part of the year,
the three staff nurses in turn resigning, owing to marriage, home ties,
etc., and for a few weeks it was necessary to get in temporary help.
As the Home does not train pupil midwives there is more difficulty in
getting fully qualified nurses who are willing to undertake all the work,
quite apart from the fact that more has to be paid in salaries to qualified