[Report 1932] / Medical Officer of Health, Wolverhampton County Borough.

  • Wolverhampton (England). County Borough Council.
Date:
1932
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1932] / Medical Officer of Health, Wolverhampton County Borough. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/82 (page 17)
    In cases where a doable Maternity Benefit is received an extra charge of 10/- a week shall be imposed for a stay in hospital not exceeding three weeks, but that the maximum fee charged shall not in any case exceed 42/- per week. In necessitous cases, where both husband and wife are out of benefit, the Committee may remit the whole of the charges. Cases in which a difficult confinement is anticipated are sent for choice to the Women’s Hospital, whilst cases requiring institutional accommodation because of unsuitable home conditions, are recom¬ mended to the Municipal Hospital at New Cross. The number of such cases sent from the ante-natal clinics during 1932 amounted to 59. These cases are additional to women who did not pass through the ante-natal clinics and who were admitted as Public Assistance cases. Infant Welfare Work.—This section of the Corporation’s activities includes the visiting oarried out by the lady Health Visitors in the homes of the people, and also the attendances of babies and young children at the welfare centres. As stated in my Report for last year, the real problem has been to maintain supervision over the children between two years and five years. The most economical method of doing this is by securing the attendance of the toddler at the clinic for routine examination and advice at stated intervals. If such attendances are not kept up, the alternative is for the Health Visitor to follow the child to its home and keep it under supervision there. A variety of unsuccessful attempts have been made to induce mothers to bring their children regularly to the clinics. They are often willing to attend more frequently than is necessary during the first year or so of the infant’s life, but after that many of them cease to come altogether. The tabular results of last year’s work are un¬ satisfactory in so far as they show an actual falling-off in the toddler’s attendances at the clinics, but this is compensated for by the greatly increased number of home visits paid by the Health Visitors to these classes of children. Dealing first with the work of the Health Visitors, it will be seen from Table XIII. that a total of 27,198 visits were paid during the year, an increase of 5,000 visits over those recorded in 1931. There was a slight reduction in the number of first visits paid to new babies