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The centre will provide training places for 95 mentally severely sub-normal children of
school age, plus a special unit for 20 children suffering from physical as well as mental
handicap. The accommodation to be provided will include assembly hall, 7 class rooms, 3 rooms
for the special care unit, a nursery, handicraft room and domestic science room. There will
also be recreational facilities including playground, grassed area and children's flower
garden.
Adult Training Centres
There are two centres in the borough for training subnormal adults, one being an industrial
centre for males and the other comprising a senior group for females aged 16 and over
with an adolescent group of both sexes aged 13 plus.
Pending the construction of a purpose built adult training centre, an opportunity arose
during the year to transfer the men's industrial training centre to more satisfactory premises
on their vacation by the Council's Housing Department staff. Considerable improvement in
working conditions and amenities have been much appreciated by the trainees and staff. One of
the assistant supervisors was seconded to attend a year's residential diploma course organised
by the National Association for Mental Health.
At these centres social and work training are given. The majority are so handicapped as
not to be able to take up outside employment, but the introduction to working conditions and
routine gives sufficient support and self-confidence to enable some of the less severely
handicapped to take up open employment.
Industrial Work at Training and Day Centres
Industrial work undertaken during the year included such tasks as assembling cardboard
boxes, sets of darts, skipping ropes, paint boxes; packing curtain rails, toys, pencil cases,
cardboard boxes; sorting chess-sets, pocket games, plastic egg-cups, whips and tops; making
playing bricks, toy ironing boards, tidy boxes, sorting trays, easels, test-tube racks,
basketry bases, cots; trimming and bundling plastic mouldings, thumb-holing medical boxes,
and repairs to furniture.
Amounts received for work executed by the trainees amounted to £3,450, against which has
to be offset the cost of materials. Payment is made to trainees, based on attendance, and is
regarded as incentive pocket-money to supplement state benefits which they receive. £1,890
was paid out as incentive pocket-money during the year.
A revised system of payments of incentive money to adult females attending the training
centre was approved by the Health Committee to take effect from 1st April, 1968, payments of a
fixed amount to be made each week to replace the existing system whereby trainees share income
received for individual contracts as and when they are completed. It is considered that a
regular weekly "wage packet" being collected by trainees as for persons in normal employment
would have a beneficial effect.
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