[Report 1971] / Medical Officer of Health, Staffordshire County Council.

  • Staffordshire (England). County Council.
Date:
1971
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1971] / Medical Officer of Health, Staffordshire County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The bulk of the work in connection with home helps had been carried out in the six area health offices. The removal of this work, to¬ gether with the increased centralisation of the Ambulance Service, caused the Health Committee to recommend the termination of the “area scheme” and this took place on the 31st July, 1971. The value of this method of decentralisation and indeed the need for any decentralisation at all had been strongly debated since almost the beginning of the scheme in 1948. Unquestionably it was a most expensive form of administration; it is doubtful if it was as effective as central administration and certainly it was maintained largely on the argument that it was more democratic. The situation of the area committee system has relevance to the new proposals for the changed National Health Service. The experience of the County scheme would indicate that the proposal for the new service of large units each having its own clearly marked responsibilities stands a greater chance of success than small units with limited functions subject to the overall control of a larger body. In eighteen months from the time of writing this foreword, the County Health Department will have ceased to exist and the wind of change is blowing in the health service world - as it is also in Local Government affairs. In a few months the writer will have ceased work in the County Health Department after 32 years. There have been three county medical officers in Staffordshire and each has been appointed at a time of change. Dr. Reid was appointed in 1888 and as the first appointment itself was a change. His long service up to 1922 covered the period of public health devoted to sanitary circumstances. Indeed his services as a consultant in water and sewage provisions were in demand over the whole country. Appointed in 1922 Dr. Carruthers guided the development of the personal medical services which legislation encouraged between the wars. The aim was to fill in the gap of medical need because of the patchiness of voluntary effort and the limitations of the insurance scheme. Very efficient and skilful services were built up over the country, including Staffordshire, involving the provision of general hospitals, tuberculosis treatment schemes, maternity services and so on. So matters continued until 1948 when the National Health Service was brought in and hospitals were brought under separate control. The next period was one of expansion in the community provision of medical and social services which are due now to be rearranged and much of the social element has already departed. My service with the County has covered this period, but also goes back to earlier times. Indeed detailed environmental work formed an important part of the work of the Health Department in the early ’40s and continues today. This reminiscence would perhaps be permissible only on the grounds of retiring from a long period of work, but it has more signiffcance than that. The one theme running through the changing role of the medical officer has been the prevention of illness and promotion of health amongst the public. The most urgent need in the early years was to obtain healthy