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camp at Dymchurch, Kent, joining groups of trainees from other London Boroughs.
Recuperative holidays are arranged for mentally ill persons under community care.
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 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 avai1able one evening each week for experimental reading and writing classes
for mentally sub-normal chi1dren at which the head teacher of the training school gives
her services.
Day Centres
There is a Council day centre for the mentally ill and two others administered
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 dayon five days a
week and are provided with a midday meal and light refreshments.
An increased service for psychogeriatric patients was commenced during the year,
by the opening of the Council's day centre for these persons on five days a week,
instead of three days per week. A social club for day centre patients is held on two
evenings per week at which staff of the Centre voluntarily give their time. One of
the Supervisors commenced an Art and Educational class this year.
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.
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