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The present standard charge for home help service is 5/8d. an hour which
is reduced according to the financial circumstances. The service is free to
certain classes, e.g. persons in receipt of old age or retirement pension or
on national assistance, or suffering from toxaemia of pregnancy where a medical
certificate is submitted.
Specially trained helps are utilised to provide assistance to problem
families.
Households numbering 3,553 were provided with the service during the year.
(Statistics on page 92).
Day Care Service
An experimental day care service has been commenced in the Borough home
help service by which help is given to aged persons in selected cases by
neighbours or persons living in the immediate vicinity. This service is
supplementary to the home help service and is intended to cater for those
persons who are chronically ill, or bedridden and living alone and who
require visiting and attention several times a day.
District and Home Nursing
Arrangements were made prior to 1st April,1965 for home nursing to continue
on the existing agency basis. Certain administrative difficulties in regard
to Bethnal Green and Shoreditch District Nursing Associations had to be overcome.
This was achieved by sharing the available staff so that approximately
half were allocated to form a Bethnal Green contingent to work in Tower
Hamlets. The Superintendent came over to Tower Hamlets with charge of a home
nurses' sub-centre at Rochelle Infant Welfare Centre. By mutual consent a
unified East London and Bethnal Green District Nurses Association was set up to
administer the service within the new Borough. The Nursing Sisters of St.
John the Divine continued to provide a home nursing service in part of Poplar,
in addition to their responsibility for domiciliary midwifery in the eastern
half of the Borough.
Home nurses (East London and Bethnal Green District Nursing Associations)
paid 77,728 visits to a total of 1936 patients. Of these visits, approximately
72% were to the aged in their homes. Some 52% of visits were for the purpose
of giving an injection, or to supervise the taking of prescribed medicines.In
the latter case, the aged and particularly the mentally confused, create an
increasing demand for assistance. However the tendency over the last decade
for a reduction in the overall work load for all aged groups continued owing
partly to the further substitution of oral for parental therapy. Movements
of population,improved environmental conditions and the state welfare provisions
contributing to a general improvement in the health of the community, are
other factors in the decline of home nursing visiting.
35.