ABSTRACT
Secondly, the health visitors know that their relationship with some families is a difficult or delicate one. A few families resent their visits and actively obstruct their attempts to work with them. In some cases, the visitor, while she is tolerated, is only received with a polite hostility. In such circumstances we asked the health visitors to notify us before approaching the mother, and we then wrote to the mother asking her to take part in an inquiry being conducted by the University; that is to say, we did not give any indication that the health visitor or the Health Department were involved in any way. One of our own interviewers would then undertake the interview. All interviews of this sort were included as part of the health visitors' sample.
