[Report 1966] / School Medical Officer of Health, Bristol.

  • Bristol (England). Council.
Date:
1966
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1966] / School Medical Officer of Health, Bristol. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    10/60 (page 8)
    INTRODUCTION To the Chairman and Members of the Education Committee: I have the honour to present the annual report of the Bristol School Health Service for 1966, the 59th in the series. STAFFING Early in the year Bristol suffered an outstanding loss in the death of Mr. Ramsey Garden, consultant ophthalmic surgeon and, in the words of Mr. Jardine, his successor as adviser to the school health service, “ the principal architect of the school eye service in its early days ”. I also have to report the death of Miss K. Coleman, who had served the Corporation for many years as speech therapist. Another sad loss was that of Miss P. Collinson, a young dental surgery assistant, who was killed in a road accident. Members of staff who have retired after long service are the Misses C. V. and B. D. Robertson, physiotherapists, Mr. Leonard Tasker, chiropodist, and Mr. H. W. Williams, dental surgeon, who has unfortunately had to retire early owing to ill- health. The Headmaster of Periton Mead Residential School for Delicate Children, Mr. C. Organ, also retired during the year. Our good wishes go with them all. One of our school medical officers. Dr. A. J. Wood, has been promoted to the position of first assistant medical officer of health for epidemiology, his predecessor. Dr. N. A. Dent, having been appointed lecturer in medical statistics and epidemi- ology in the University of Bristol, and also principal research officer to the multiple handicaps project. Both make contributions to this report. In the Child and Family Guidance Service, I have to record the appointment of Dr. Lumsden Walker as consultant in child psychiatry at the Children’s Hospital in the Department of Mental Health. He is still able to provide us with some weekly sessions. Shortage of professional staff has handicapped several branches of the service and seems likely to continue, particularly where the qualifications required are high and lengthy to obtain. There have been vacancies in the child and family guidance service especially for educational psychologists. There is a serious shortage of teachers of the deaf, and the difficulty experienced by the Regional Hospital Board in filling vacancies for an E.N.T. surgeon and an ophthalmologist has caused delays in the Board’s services for school children. The tonsillectomy waiting list is still far too long. During the entire year we had the services of only one audiometrician for school screening of children’s hearing, instead of the two which the volume of work really calls for. The trend today is towards the expansion of care for the education- ally retarded, the maladjusted and those with hearing difficulties, and at present the number of trained staff available does not keep pace with demand. THE YEAR’S WORK Much useful work has been achieved during the year and thought has been given to new developments. Unfortunately, there were more cases of infectious hepatitis than for several years, and two schoolchildren died of the disease, but otherwise