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48
Housing, Health, Children's and Education Services to provide effective social
work for the very large number of families now seriously in arrears. Those notified
during 1967 totalled 250. In addition to the Chief Officer Standing Committee
94 Co-ordinating case conferences were held, requested by:-
The Children’s department 30
Lambeth Housing department 20
Principal Nursing Officer 16
Welfare department 9
Divisional School Care organiser 5
G.L.C. Housing department 3
N.S.P.C.C. 3
South London Family Service unit 3
Ministry of Social Security 1
Probation Service 1
The Old Bailey 1
Maudsley Hospital 1
Dr. Barnardo’s 1 94
HEALTH SERVICES - FAMILY CASEWORKERS
Throughout the year there was a waiting list of multi-problem families which
were discussed at Co-ordinating Committee Conferences or were rehoused in
Lambeth from other boroughs where they had been receiving casework which was
still considered necessary. Consequently both caseworkers employed by the
department carried the maximum caseload possible without defeating the purpose
of the service which is to provide a co-ordinating worker who can give more time
to the problems of the family than can be given by any combination of normal
services. The two caseworkers were concerned with a total of 42 families
involving 169 children.
All were long-term cases, a number arising from incurable parental inadequacy
due to mental subnormality; the problems of others stemmed from drink, gambling,
an increasing number of drug takers, and an increasing number of parents discharged
from psychiatric treatment with an anti-social personality problem
unresponsive to psychiatric help. Common features amongst the majority were
debt, including hire purchase, rent arrears and meter breaking; marital disharmony,
often with physical violence; bad school attendance and potential or actual
juvenile delinquency; the father’s irregular employment (and in one or two cases
virtual unemployability) and the mother's apathy owing to ill-health. Many of the
children on the other hand, though near-illiterate, were in robust physical and
mental health and well worth a great deal of hard work in the hope of preventing
a repetition of their parents’ social patterns. Child neglect, in the superficial
sense of dirt and lack of training, was another common factor, but child cruelty
as such extremely rare.