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Parents Association
Effective liaison with the Tower Hamlets Society continued throughout the year. This Society
comprising mentally handicapped children and young persons receiving community care and their
parents, relatives and friends is a very active organisation in the Borough and arranges many
activities, social and cultural, for its charges.
Quarterly meetings of the Society are attended by an officer of the department to further
the liaison between the Society and the Council, and to discuss common problems. The Chairman of
the Health Committee attended a quarterly meeting to discuss suggestions to improve the services
and facilities provided by the Council.
The Council makes available the use of its junior training school premises to the Society
on three evenings a week for youth club purposes and dancing class, and on a Saturday evening
each month for social and sports activities. The premises are also made available one evening
each week for experimental reading and writing classes for mentally sub-normal children, at
which the supervisor of the training school gives her services.
Day Centres
There is a Council day centre for the mentally ill and two others admihistered by a
voluntary organisation in the borough, which is financially supported by the Council. Their aim
and purpose is to provide a meeting place where patients who live at home can obtain occupational
and educational therapy. Patients are able to discuss with mental health social workers their
personal problems and difficulties. An incidental object of the day centres is to provide some
relief to relatives from the care of mentally ill persons. The patients attend for the whole day
on five days a week and are provided with a midday meal and light refreshments. From September
the supplyof midday meals to the day and training centres was undertaken by the Council's Welfare
Department, replacing the service continued since 1965 provided by the Inner London Education
Authority School Meals Service.
The Council's day centre for psycho-geriatrics is open on three days a week.
Adult Training Centres
There are two centres in the borough for training sub-normal 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.
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.
A social club for the trainees commenced at the Industrial Training Centre this year on
Wednesday evenings at which the Supervisor and his assistants give their services. Parents are
able to see the types of work carried out by their sons.
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