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The office receives many and varied requests for help. Some people are
found to be in need of simple material help such as clothes, furniture and
bedding and the Association is often able to help immediately because of the
many gifts it receives from members of the public. A fairly common request
is for help with interior decorating. It has always been possible to get help
for really desperate cases from voluntary organisations such as Toc H, but
there are now two local groups of the International Voluntary Service which
specialises in decorating, and it is therefore expected that help will be
available to more people.
The Association is constantly aware of its real challenge and that is the
need to ensure that every elderly Lambethan who is in need of any sort of
help or advice should know of, and feel able to approach, the AssociationExpansion
and improvement of services and planned publicity drives should
all help in this direction.
Visiting
Contact with the infirm can only be made by home visits. Similarly once
a person is known to the Association it is possible in this way to keep in
touch and ensure that any help required is made available. During the year
under review 1,690 welfare visits were made by the Association's staff,
almost twice as many as last year. Most of these visits were made at the
request of social workers, family, friends, or neighbours to investigate
particular problems. In addition, whenever time allowed, visits were made to
older or infirm people with whom the Association had had no recent contactIn
many cases it was found that they were in immediate need of help and
services. This experience, plus the many cases of hardship revealed by the
severe winter, reinforced the Executive Committee in its decision to attempt
to establish a comprehensive visiting service. The Deputy Organising
Secretary who is a trained and experienced social worker took up her duties
on 1st April and three welfare assistants will start work in May. The
results of the work of the visiting staff will be kept under close investigate0"
and if considered justified, further appointments could be made before the end
of the coming year.
It is clear that with the expansion of welfare visiting there will be an
ever increasing need for voluntary workers to undertake friendly visiting
Many elderly people have no family or close friends living nearby, and the
pleasure and help they receive from regular visits from a local resident
introduced to them by the Association can be quite considerable.
Association would like to thank all those organisations and individuals
who are helping in this way and especially those who offered their services
for the first time during this year. Every effort will be made to expand
aspect of the work during the coming year and otters ot help will gratefully
received.