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Home Help Service
Home helps continued to provide a worthwhile service in the home, the value of which
cannot be over-emphasised. Apart from the help and comfort afforded to the lonely, elderly
and infirm and the chronic sick, the service was also used in twenty-five instances to provide
early morning and evening help in households which were motherless for various reasons (death,
illness in hospital, desertion, etc.). Young children were prepared for school and escorted
to and from day nurseries. The service provided a positive contribution to the prevention of
children being taken into residential care and in keeping families together. Instances of
the kindly help given by individual home helps beyond the service for which they were paid
were numerous and were illustrated by the following two cases.
A home help was provided for an elderly deaf and dumb and blind woman who was discharged
from hospital with no one able to make real contact with her. The home help had not previously
known anyone with such major disabilities, but she set about learning the deaf and dumb
alphabet and succeeded in helping the person concerned with the result that there is a marked
improvement in every way in this household.
Another home help dealing with a family of husband, wife and three children all under
nine years of age, showed kindness and resourcefulness over and above her official duties
following the admission of the mother to a mental hospital. Her services enabled the father
of the family to continue to work. During school holidays she took the children out at her
own expense and in her own time. Unfortunately, the father attempted suicide following a
road traffic offence and as soon as the home help heard of this (on a Sunday afternoon) she
left her own family and went at once to comfort her "adopted" family.
At the beginning of the year the Council authorised the payment of an allowance towards
the cost of outdoor clothing for whole-time and part-time home helps with a minimum of three
months service. This is in addition to the supply of indoor overalls.
Statistics for the year are as follows (1966 shown in brackets):-
Aged 65 or
over on first
visit in 1967
Aged under 65 on first visit in 1967
Chronic sick
& Tuberculous
Men t al ly
Disordered
Maternity
Other
Total
No. of cases 2,203 (2,280) 161 (167) 10 (5) 57 (96) 213(285) 2,644
(2,833)
No. of home helps employed at end of 1967
(whole-time equivalent)
188 (176)
Observation and Handicap Register
The Ministry of Health has asked all local health authorities to keep a register of
children with a physical or mental handicap (either acquired or congenital) and of children
who, because of adverse maternal factors or for other reasons, may be at risk of developing
a handicap. The progress and development of the children at risk is reviewed at regular
intervals until a diagnosis can be made or until it is established that no handicap is
present. The screening of these children is carried out by medical officers in the welfare
centres who specialise in the field of developmental paediatrics.
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