[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Kingston-upon-Thames].

  • Kingston upon Thames (London, England). Council.
Date:
[1971?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: [Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Kingston-upon-Thames]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    57/174 (page 53)
    53 The service is provided on the recommendation of the family doctor and the amount of service is assessed on need and availability of home helps by the Home Help Supervisor. A charge is made based on the cost of the service, but is reduced according to the recipient's means, where necessary. The establishment of the equivalent of 60 full time home helps has never been reached, and at 31st December 1970 there were 74 home helps, equivalent to 36 full time staff. During the year 97 applicants were interviewed; 39 of these were not considered suitable or found other employment. There is a potential reservoir of married women who are interested in doing this type of work but cannot make arrangements for their school children to be cared for during the school holidays. These recruitment difficulties have resulted in heavy pressure on existing staff which has in some instances proved inadequate to meet the demands on the service. Despite these difficulties a total of 65,207 hours of service were devoted to the care of the sick and elderly in the borough. The following are details of the households assisted during the year: Category Number Assisted Persons aged 65 or over at time of visit 814 Chronic sick and tuberculous 60 Mentally disordered 4 Maternity cases 79 Others 81 Total: 1038