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SOCIAL WORK
The team of mental health social workers numbers 14 whole time officers, one of whom is
seconded to a full time university course for the Certificate in Mental Health. The group includes
4 qualified psychiatric social workers; one with a certificate in social work; 5 with social science
certificates; and the others with mental nursing Qualifications.
In order that the standard of support and care should be of a high quality, supervision and
consultation has been given regularly by the senior staff. Consultation has also been a regular
feature of the liaison and co-ordination that has developed both within the health department and
with other departments in the Borough, namely home helps, health and geriatric visitors, child care
officers, welfare officers and housing welfare officers. The mental health social workers have also
become closely associated with other agencies and hospital social work departments in the Borough.
Much help and advice has been received from general practitioners, doctors in hospitals, out-patient
departments and mental hospitals. A weekly case discussion has been held for the benefit of the
staff; this has also been extremely valuable as a means of enabling other professional workers to
learn of the work undertaken by the team, During the year, speakers from the school care committees,
the Children's Department and the Welfare Department addressed the group.
Some indication of the number of agencies that may need to be involved in order to bring a
family through a crisis successfully is portrayed by the family that was referred early in 1965 by
the psychiatric social worker at one of the General Hospitals in the Borough.
The family consisted of four young children with their father and mother. The latter had
had a number of severe mental illnesses associated with her pregnancies and had been in a mental
hospital four times in the previous five years.
Shortly after her referral the mother again became pregnant and declined an offer of termination.
She was supported through her pregnancy by the mental health social worker co-ordinating
the range of supportive services - day nursery attendance for the youngest child; home help for
the mother; counselling for the father in the successful repayment of arrears to the Electricity and
Gas Boards; and close liaison with the hospital doctors and social workers involved in caring for
her physical and mental well-being.
In spite of some reluctance on the part of the general hospital to admit this mother with
her previous psychiatric history, the close attention and support that the mental health social worker
was giving enabled the maternity unit to accept her prior to her confinement for treatment of some
complications of pregnancy, and for this period and the subsequent confinement the Children's
Department placed a peripatetic housemother in the home where she was supported by the mental
health social worker.
Despite several physical complications and a rhesus anomaly in the baby, the mother's
mental health was sustained in hospital with tne help of the psychiatrist and with supportive
visiting by the mental health social worker. On her discharge, once more a home help and the day
nursery were introduced, and a close working relationship planned between the health visitor and
the mental health social worker for the family's subsequent support.
It is perhaps justified to associate the absence of mental breakdown during this pregnancy
and puerperium with the carefully planned and co-ordinated social support.
HOSPITAL SERVICES
The Borough is at present situated in the catchment area served by Harperbury, Horton
and Friem Hospitals and staff have worked closely with the staff of these hospitals. In addition,
University College Hospital (North Wing), the Royal Free Hospital and the Whittington Hospital
provide a certain number of beds for patients under observation and treatment.
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