No abstract

Objectives -To describe the first two years of a paediatric home care service.Design -Observational cross sectional study, 1989-91.Setting -One inner London health district.Patients -611 children referred to the service; 50 children selected from those referred during the first year, whose parents were interviewed and whose general practitioners were invited to complete a questionnaire.Main measures -Description and costs of service; views of parents and general practitioners of selected sample of children.Results -In its second year the team received 303 referrals and made 4004 visits at a salary cost of £98 000, an average of £323/referral and £24/visit. This represented a referral rate of 3.2% (258/7939) of inpatient-episodes from the main referring hospital between

No abstract

A special conditions register (SCR) linked to the child health system's register of ail children has been in use in West Sussex since 1977. This paper describes the aims, organisation, and use of the SCR and gives examples of the aggegated data that may be obtained. Of the 155 000 children aged 0-17 resident in West Sussex in 1990, 4-3% were included on the SCR. Altogether 45.7% of children on the SCR had physical conditions with mild or no disability and 17-2% had moderate educational problems. The prevalence of severe hearing loss as defined was 1-7 per 1000 aged 5-17. The prevalence of diabetes mellitus was 1.2 per 1000 children aged 0-17. Validation of the SCR for diabetes mellitus found 35/36 of the eligible children were correctly registered and no child was incorrectly included. The conflicting priorities for maintaining a register for the care of individual children, for service planning, and for epidemiological research are discussed.

Objective: To determine the proportion of women attending a genitourinary medicine clinic (GUMC) who are in need of contraception and the proportion of women attending a family planning clinic (FPC) who may require screening or treatment for sexually transmitted disease (STD).Design: Cross-sectional survey.Setting: A large FPC (17 600 attendances by women a year) and a large GUMC (20 060 attendances by women a year) in an inner London health district.Subjects: All clients attending the two clinics in consecutive weeks (356 GUMC and 335 FPC). In addition a non-random cluster of other women attending the same clinics later in the year were interviewed in depth (21 GUMC and 20 FPC).Results: Of women at the GUMC 10-4% (95% CI 7-2-13-6) were at risk of unwanted pregnancy and not using contraception. Women aged under 20 years and women not registered with a general practitioner (GP) were more likely to be in this group. A further 13-8% may have been using contraception unreliably as they were not obtaining contraception from a GP or FPC. Ofwomen at the FPC 1-8% (95% CI 0-3-32) complained of symptoms of genitourinary infection. In-depth interviews showed Birth Control Trust,