Household Helps.—The need for help in the home before, at, and after confinement is urgent, but in order to prevent untrained women doing midwifery work, careful supervision and an organised service under the public health authority are necessary. The experiments made by relief committees show the value of such a service.
Women as Councillors.—Working women should be elected on to councils and serve on public health committees.
Public Health Maternity Sub-Committees.—These committees should be largely composed of representatives of the women concerned. Such representation should be secured whenever possible through the following industrial women’s organisations: the Women’s Co-operative Guild, Women’s Trade Unions, the Women’s Labour League, and the Railway Women’s Guild.
Any parts of this scheme not at first taken over by Public Health Committees—e.g., Dinners, Household Helps—might be organised experimentally by the sub-committees with a view to ultimate inclusion in a municipal scheme.
Ministry of Health.—In the future it will probably be advantageous to establish a Ministry of Health, with a Maternity and Infant Life Department, partly staffed by women.
It is essential that Government departments and Public Health Committees should be in constant communication with organised working-women, and be ready to welcome their co-operation, so that their needs and wishes may be freely consulted. It is by a partnership between the women who are themselves concerned, the medical profession, and the State that the best results of democratic government can be secured for the mothers and infants of the country.
To be obtained from the Women’s Co-operative Guild, 28, Church Row, Hampstead, London, N.W.:
The National Care of Maternity (leaflets for town and country), ½d. each, or 3s. a hundred.