View report page

83
continued to attend groups, while others have come back informally
and to social gatherings.
Finding accommodation to which residents can move remains
a problem, particularly with the more dependent patients. It is
hoped that links with sympathetic landladies might be made in
future.
Secondment of mental health social worker to Wandsworth
Town Child Guidance Unit
A mental health social worker continues to attend this Child
Guidance Unit for five sessions a week. Our contact with the
unit has been consolidated and has proved very beneficial both to
the I.L.E.A. and to ourselves.
Mental health social workers linked with
general medical practices
There are now three mental health social workers linked with
general medical practices. These social workers attend the practice
for one session a week and selected patients are referred to them
by the general practitioner for assessment or short-term casework.
It is felt that very useful preventive work is being carried out by
this co-operation between general practice and local authority
social work.
Boarding-out of mentally handicapped patients
This year the Council's Social Services Committee approved a
scheme for the boarding-out of mentally handicapped persons.
Several placings with selected landladies have been made by the
Health Department and it is hoped that in time this service will
expand. A great deal of work will however have to be done in
order to obtain the co-operation of suitable landladies.
Day centres for the mentally ill
Three Wandsworth patients attend day centres in other London
Boroughs.
Sunday Lunch Club
A very useful club was started and is now being run most
successfully by the Reverend Bryan Dawson and members of his
and other Putney churches at the Presbyterian Church, Upper
Richmond Road, S.W.15. Mr. Dawson met our mental health
social workers earlier in the year to discuss the possibility of
starting a Sunday Lunch Club for ex-patients who were very
isolated over the weekend. Suitable people were referred to Mr.
Dawson by mental health social workers, and the Club was started