[Report 1948] / Medical Officer of Health, Essex County Council.

  • Essex (England). County Council.
Date:
1948
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1948] / Medical Officer of Health, Essex County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    167/172 (page 167)
    above combination of duties, but for various reasons this never succeeded, owing to some extent to the strong position of the Voluntary Committee for mental defectives and their desire that there should be no interference with the system of local people being appointed as home visitors. Combined Treatment Centres. Another important function of the Medical and Nursing Services Joint Sub- Committee was the provision of Combined Treatment Centres. Prior to 1928, Minor (Ailment Clinics were arranged in suitable buildings, e.g. Sunday School rooms, Parish Halls, and disused buildings of various kinds, and the same kind of accommodation was often used for Infant Welfare Clinics, and later Ante-Natal Clinics. Most of these places jwere rather grubby, not very hygienic and certainly in themselves did not carry any message of what is understood by sanitation and hygiene. Accordingly, on the basis of the aphorism coined by King Edward VII—“ An authority meanly housed is meanly [considered ”—the Committee decided that it was quite time that premises used for [jclinic purposes should in themselves be an object lesson to the people frequenting them. xlThe County Architect was instructed to design a Combined Treatment Centre which owould serve all the various Public Health purposes of the locality, and the first building jbf its kind to be designed, planned and built for this particular purpose was opened hy Kathleen Lady Rayleigh on 25th May, 1928, in Wantz Road, Maldon. The idea so captivated the County Council that very soon it became a prescribed thing that oorovision should be made for two new Combined Treatment Centres in the estimates for each year. Later on this was increased to three and finally to four. Unfortunately she outbreak of war in 1939 put a temporary stop to the construction of these most islesirable buildings. Actually one was completed and opened in 1932, three in 1933, o;wo in 1934, two in 1935, four in 1937, five in 1938 and two in 1939—a total of 20. It Us a matter of history that, during the war many of these Combined Treatment Centres uproved themselves of tremendous value in forming suitable headquarters for Civil defence purposes, the ordinary clinics being carried on side by side with the war-time ervices, in spite of black-out, anti-blast walls and steel girders. >1 T. he National Health Service. I have already made incidental reference to the new National Health Service. No ecord of the last thirty years would be complete without some further reference to the dministrative changes which took place in the last years of my office. The Education Act of 1944 had a great influence on County administration inas- much as it provided for the transfer of Education functions from seven autono- mous areas. In order to meet the obvious need for some local control the County was arcelled out into eleven Divisions. This more or less forced the hand of the Health ommittee when, arising out of the National Health Service Act, 1946, it in turn had ) carve out administrative Areas for the decentralization of most of the^ functions qnposed upon it by Part III of the Act. The formula used for the creation of Divisions llr Education was based upon very different factors from those which ought to have riiien the governing principles in determining Areas for health administration. Never heless it was deemed wise not to alter the Divisions thus created but to adopt them r the purposes of health administration. Naturally it was a gie.it blow to many of