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32
The health department during the year continued to take a
detailed interest in the work for old people generally and remained in
the closest touch with the Lewisham Old People's Welfare Association
(LOPWA), which Association has offices in the department. LOPWA
is, so far as the borough council's work for old people's welfare is
concerned, the main body in the area and has affiliated to it the various
other bodies to which the Council makes grant. LOPWA is responsible
for the meals-on-wheels service to housebound old people.
Visiting of old people
Three nurses (officially called Women Health officers) are concerned
with old people and with infectious disease. Their work for old people
is tabulated as follows :—

The chronic sick
In the report for 1956 I dealt at some length with the admission of
old people not acutely ill to hospital or a Home and with the provision
of a geriatric unit. The report was to the effect that there were often
difficulties in securing quick admission and that the general care of old
people could be helped by a geriatric unit. Ultimately a medical
committee was set up by the Lewisham Group Hospital Management
Committee to consider this matter, and I was appointed a member of it.
Unfortunately I found myself in disagreement in certain matters with
the majority of the committee and had to put in a minority report.
The majority report was to the effect that apart from those chronic
sick already in the care of the hospitals in the group there were about
ninety under care in the sick bay in Ladywell Lodge who could be
regarded as of the type needing hospital care. These included patients
from all parts of London and sick patients from other homes, so that
only about one-third to one-half had actually originated in Lewisham.
However, once admitted to the Lodge, it became impracticable to regard
them as other than Lewisham residents.
The procedure, however, for dealing with normal applications for
the admission to Lewisham hospital of alleged chronic sick patients
provided, so the majority report said, for a speedy assessment of need,
which if found to exist, was followed by early admission. On the whole,
it was felt that, apart from the problem of those patients in Ladywell
Lodge to which reference had been made, there was little need at the
moment to make greater provision for the care of the chronic sick than
already existed. What was needed, however, it was suggested, was a