[Report 1970] / Medical Officer of Health, Durham County Palatine / County Council.

  • Durham (England : County). Council.
Date:
1970
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1970] / Medical Officer of Health, Durham County Palatine / County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    66/124 (page 64)
    ADMINISTRATION The function of the school health service is essentially to ascertain and assess, as early as possible, those children with physical, mental or social handicaps in order that remedial action can be taken if appro- priate and to enable forward planning and provision of special educational facilities for them. As the desirability of continuity in medical care from infancy to school leaving age has become more and more apparent over recent years, the aim has been to develop a completely integrated child health service in which the transition from pre-school to school age no longer involves a transfer to the care of another branch of the local authority health service. Ideally, under such a system any handicaps are ascertained in the very early years of life, remedial action can be taken at a time when the maximum benefit is likely to accrue and the need for any special form of education can be determined well in advance of the fifth birthday. The extent to which the service is concerned in the care of the school child may be summarised as follows:— 1. Inspection—Routine medical inspections are carried out on all children commencing their school career, again when they attain the age of ten years and, finally when they leave school. Of the 135,000 children attending normal schools and the 350 mentally handicapped children in special schools, 36,000 were inspected during the year. In order to deploy the available medical staff to the best advantage and to ensure as many schools as possible are visited, some adjustments were made during the year to the areas allocated to school medical officers. As in previous years, it was again necessary to make considerable use of part-time medical staff to offset the shortage of permanent whole-time officers. The success of these measures is reflected in the statistics relating to school medical inspections, the number of children seen in 1970 being the highest for eight years. Associated with this monitoring of general health is the so-called “sweep testing” of children for hearing defects. As mentioned elsewhere, this is normally carried out on children commencing school and again between the ages of seven and eight years. 2. Referrals—With the agreement of general medical practitioners, arrangements for treatment or for further specialist investigation are made when any defect is discovered at the time of an inspection. During the year 14,000 special examinations were carried out either as part of a continuing observation or at the request of parents or teachers. These examinations include further consultations with general practitioners or specialists or referral to our own or hospital clinics. 3. Special examinations—Children shown to be in need of special education are the subject of recommendations and their progress is kept under continuous review. 4. Protection against infection and other adverse conditions—Primarily, the aim is to raise the level of immunity to specific diseases and approximately 30,000 children were involved in some form of immunisation procedure during the year. The service is also concerned with the control of any epidemic diseases among school children (e.g. dysentery) and the hygiene of school premises, kitchens, etc. 5. Dental care—Regular dental inspections are carried out at schools and, where necessary, appro- priate follow-up measures are taken. If the parent wishes, a child can receive the recommended treatment at the nearest school dental clinic. 6. Speech Therapy—This service has a valuable contribution to make in the management of a variety of disorders occurring in persons of all ages. In the case of children whose normal speech develop- ment has been disturbed as a result perhaps of a congential malformation, birth injury, post natal trauma or emotional upset, the expertise of the trained speech therapist can be of inestimable value. It has been calculated that perhaps 75% of the children who require this form of therapy are ascertained by local authority staffs and the Department of Education and Science recommend a ratio of one speech therapist to 11/12000 schoolchildren as a desirable standard in school health services. In common with several other medical and para-medical disciplines, there is unfortunately an acute shortage of qualified speech therapists and the service provided by this County Council