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trainees and giving individual assistance with their social and temperamental difficulties.
With understanding and encouragement many of our trainees can be helped to become more adult
and so to fit in more easily at home and, in one or two cases, able to work in open industry.
The variety of our industrial work has been much wider than in previous years. Trainees
have been responsible for the assembling of toys, making up cowboy and indian sets, packing
farm animals, etc, also packing sets of handkerchiefs and ties for the Christmas trade,
labelling and packing scarves, covering collecting boxes, and sticking "Green Shield" stamps
in books, to enumerate some of the jobs which have been tackled with enthusiasm by our
trainees.
A group from our Centre has joined with Bennett Court for weekly swimming sessions at
the local baths, an activity which has been much enjoyed by all participants.
Our annual open day, during Mental Health Week, was very well supported by parents and
others and by a large number of professional workers; this opportunity to meet with our
interested friends in the community is an encouragement to both staff and trainees.
During the year we were fortunate in obtaining a qualified assistant, part of whose time
was to be devoted to organising a fuller social training programme. So far, due to limited
staffing, it has not been possible to put this programme fully into operation, but we look
foward to implementing it in the coming year, when we hope to be able to appoint our third
member of staff.
Our year ended,merrily with the usual Christmas party and conjuring show. We anticipate
further steady progress in 1969.
BENNETT COURT TRAINING CENTRE
It is now nearly two years since we moved to Bennett Court from the Church Hall at
Junction Road, and the experiment of having adult female and male trainees working together
has proved very successful.
A comprehensive programme has been developed for the social training of the trainee and
also for industrial work and handicrafts. As a result of this programme four of our trainees
(male) have now obtained work in open employment and I think we can look foward to others
doing so in the future. Our close contact with the Disablement Resettlement Officer has helped
in this respect.
The Centre is in an ideal position amid a block of flats, which gives the trainees good
contact with the local residents, who come into the Centre regularly to buy or ask for
articles to be made.
The pleasanter working conditions have resulted in far greater output of industrial
work and handicrafts and we have been able to double the maximum payment to trainees;
competent workers are now eligible to receive pocket money allowances of up to thirty shillings
a week, which they receive in addition to their social security grants.
This increased output has continued despite the fact that there is always a group of
six trainees taking part in social training, simple laundry and cooking, and others paying
visits to places of interest in the London Area (i.e. Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey,
Natural History Museum, Science Museum, a tour of the new Euston Station). Although social
training has for some time been recognised as a "must" in any progressive training centre,
the response made by a particular young man or woman to the social training programme can
sometimes be quite striking; the increased self-confidence and social competence has frequently
been noted with enthusiasm by the parents of a trainee.
This has been an enjoyable and encouraging year.
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