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Scouts and
guides.
Scouts and Guides.
79. During 1928, the scout and guide movement continued to form an important
part of the training of patients at The Manor, at Brunswick House, and at the
South Side Home. At each of these institutions membership of the movement
has become, with few exceptions, an essential qualification for a trial in the outside
world. To become a scout or a guide is a coveted honour among the patients. Only
selected cases become members and they have privileges not allowed to other patients.
At The Manor there are two companies of scouts (100 boys in all), four companies
of girl guides (120 rangers and guides), 24 cubs and 24 brownies. At Brunswick
House, there is one scout troop, composed of 18 patients, and at the South Side
Home there is one company of girl guides, composed of 21 patients.
Male
hospital
assistants.
Male hospital assistants.
80. During 1928 it was decided to extend to the Council's institution for the
mentally defective, as necessity might arise, and so far as the male staff only were
concerned, the arrangement authorised in the previous year for application in the
mental hospital service for the employment of "hospital assistants" (see Annual
Report of the Council. 1927, Vol. II., Chapter II., par. 53, and par. 83 of Chapter II.
of the present volume), i.e., of persons employed in the care of patients, other than
strictly nursing care, and possessed of natural qualities of temperament and physique
fitting them for that work, but unable to secure the recognised diploma of proficiency
in mental nursing required from those who are to remain as members of the
recognised nursing staff.
Defectives
maintained
in poor law
institutions.
Detention of Poor Law cases in " places of safety."
81. In a circular letter (No. 712), dated 1st October, 1928, the Board of Control
drew the attention of officers of local authorities to the Board's view that local
authorities are precluded from using the provisions of section 15 of the Mental
Deficiency Act, 1913, for an alleged defective who is already being maintained by
poor law guardians in a poor law institution in which it is suggested the defective
shall be detained as in a "place of safety," since section 15 requires that a defective
shall be "found neglected, abandoned or without visible means of support," and
shall be "taken" to a place of safety, which indicates the need for physical absence,
however brief, from the poor law institution, before action under section 15 can be
contemplated. Instruction, therefore, was given to those officers of the Council
who were duly authorised to take alleged mentally defective persons to "places of
safety," subject to certain conditions, to discontinue the practice, which had been
followed for some years, of meeting a defective upon his preparing to take his discharge
from a poor law institution, of which he had been an inmate, and immediately
returning him for "place of safety" detention to the same institution. Though
the Council had no alternative but to accept the Board's view, it was thought that
the change of practice might make it impossible for some cases for whom institutional
care seemed desirable to be dealt with, because of the difficulty of keeping in touch
with the defective and of securing effective ground for action by way of petition
after the defective had left the poor law institution. The result of the change in
procedure may be the subject of comment in the next Annual Report.
Segregation
and marriftgc
of defectives.
Segregation and Marriage of Defectives.
82. During 1928, consideration was given to resolutions passed by the Leicestershire,
Southampton, Derbyshire and Cornwall County Councils expressing opinions
(i) that segregation of mentally defective persons, unless accompanied by active
measures for prevention of the propagation of the mentally unfit, is likely to impose
an unfair and continually increasing burden on the public, and (ii) that legislation