[Report 1967] / School Medical Officer of Health, Cumberland County Council.

  • Cumberland (England). County Council.
Date:
1967
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1967] / School Medical Officer of Health, Cumberland County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    6/110 (page 4)
    PREFACE To the Chairman and Members of the Education Committee: Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, I have the honour to present the Annual Report on the School Health Service for 1967. The school health service was brought into being to cover a gap in the medical service that existed at the start of this century and since then has provided advice and guidance to parents, teachers and others, on children’s health and the child in his educational setting. With the advent of the National Health Service Act, which ensures that every child will have a general practitioner to provide general medical care, the role and form of the school health service have required far-reaching changes. With the formation of general practitioner led family health care teams practising from central surgeries with full attachment of nurses and an increasing attachment of social workers, it seems that the stage is set for a transition to the comprehensive provision of medical advice, treatment and administrative action through those family health care teams who, presumably, will have amongst the medical members of the team one doctor who will have a special interest in paediatric medicine. The school nurse as an entity is now merging into a community nurse associated with the general practitioner paediatrician and it may not be too far into the future when both the doctor and the nurse have part-time appointments in a paediatric unit in hospital. The recently published Sheldon Report on Child Welfare Centres is a forward looking report, but unfortunately it ex- cluded examination of the changing scene in school health matters. In general it seems to mirror the views and the policy of this authority. The transition away from the concept of child welfare clinics to a child health service with stronger associations with the hospital and health centre, and in particular the centralising of assessment centres in hospital, are all matters which we have accepted in this county, especially in respect of the under school age child,