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62
Residential Placement under the Mental Health Act, 1959
The Council is empowered to provide residential accommodation
other than hospital accommodation for every category of
mental disorder. The Borough has as yet no Hostel of its own either
for the subnormals or for the mentally ill.
The last table gives figures for 1966 where we placed the
mentally subnormal and mentally ill in Hostels run by other local
authorities or voluntary bodies.

It will be seen that the numbers of persons so maintained has
more than doubled in 1966. Prior to recommending for Council to
meet the cost of maintaining a Borough resident at such a Hostel,
the Medical Officer of Health must be satisfied that such placement
is both necessary and suitable. The task of collecting, checking and
collating all the information required is the responsibility of the
headquarters staff.
The headquarters further deal with all staff matters, administering
the Training Centre and individual problems on which the
field staff need help and guidance. Last but not least, it answers
enquiries from within and outside the Borough and represents the
Medical Officer of Health in dealing with relevant voluntary
agencies and central Government departments.
The Immediate Future
The senior staff of the Mental Health Section were from the
beginning only too acutely aware that for the service to function
effectively we must provide a full range of services. No effort was
spared in an attempt to acquire the supportive mental health establishments,
e.g. Hostels, Training and Work Centres.
At the time of going to press the following projects were in
the varying degrees of completion. These are listed in the order
we started to work on them.