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Attention was drawn during the year, at national level, to the overcrowded conditions
prevai 1 ing in hospi tal s for the subnormal s , Local author i t ies are being urged to make more provi sions
for the care of suitable patients in the community. Solution of the problem is not so easy as first
appears, for many of the persons at present in hospital, capable of living in the community, one
is told, are the backbone of the domestic staff in institutions which already have serious staff
shortages, Further, many adults in this category have lived happily in hospitals with extensive
grounds and facilities for care and recreation, and, in the case of many, links with their
original home communi ty by now are nonexistent or very tenuous. To bring them back into an area
such as Tower Hamlets, if family ties are not viable, would border on administrative cruelty.
However, it is proposed to explore the need for a hostel for subnormals in the borough.
Particularly in respect of borderline E,S.N./sub-normal young adults some difficulty in piacement
and care has arisen when a family breaks up. Hostel care would obviate the present necessity to
send these persons outside the borough for care and for guardianship. Further, it would be possible
to continue to build on existing community roots. Unless there is a concern by the community for
its own. e.g. a local league of friends, it is difficult to envisage success from the provision
only of staff and premises, however first class, by the local authority.
Under the Urban Aid programme, consent for loan sanction enabled plans to be made to replace
one Day Nursery, at present in a prefabricated building, by a permanent building on a new site.
Limited finances were also avail able to assist pre-school play groups which have been started, by
a variety of organisations, in different parts of the borough. Experience has shown that these
groups, suitably led by trained persons, can make a worthwhile contribution to services for the
under 5-year olds supplementing the services of our own day nurseries and creche sessions at
Infant Welfare Clinics*
HOUSING
As stated in last year's annual report, there will remain some 4,000 or so unfit dwellings
for consideration in the next quinquennial up to 1975. The impetus of public inquiries, clearance
and redevelopment, on the borough council side, has been maintained throughout the year.A boost
to morale came at the very end of the year with news that the Council's Spitalfields compulsory
purchase order areas had been confirmed. As outlined elsewhere in the report, these cover the
largest single area, in terms of density of population and acreage, to be represented in the
London area. Taking some years to complete rehousing and demolition, it will remove acres of slum
tenement blocks in that ward of the borough having some of the worst environmental and social
conditions to be found in the metropolis. It is hoped this will be an augury for further successful
orders in respect of other slum and sub-standard tenements still remaining.
With the beginning of the end in sight of slum clearance, it is opportune to consider future
development removed from an overwhelming urgent necessity to demolish and rapidly rebuild
residential areas; this has been the right priority over the last decade or so. The questions
can be posed, what type of community is being created, and what ideal should now be pursued?
The expression 'balanced community' has been coined to denote a design in which development is
planned to form separate areas of residential, commercial and industrial use (as is now being
done in the borough) and also to achieve a balance of social groups. For too long, the borough
has been a place of work for professional and executive persons who commute home to other areas
at the end of the working day. Thus, there has resulted an absence of the social and cultural
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