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59
At the end of the year negotiations were in hand with the Mental After Care
Association and the National Association for Mental health for those organisations
to provide on behalf of the Council an after-care service, as a continuation and extension
of the scheme operated since 1943 by the National Association for Mental
Health at the request of the Board of Control and the Ministry of Health for persons
domiciled in London, including ex-service personnel, suffering from mental illness not
requiring, or no longer requiring, in-patient treatment.
The Council agreed to contribute 90% of the approved cost of maintaining
five psychotherapeutic social clubs in London run by the Institute of Social Psychiatry.
The clubs, which are attended by patients referred from psychiatric outpatient
clinics or from mental hospitals on discharge, provide in practical form the
means by which the patients can secure social re-adjustment and maintain normal
social relationships, guided by a psychiatrist and a social therapist.
The Council also agreed, in consideration of the care and after-care work conducted
at the centre, to contribute 33⅓% of the approved cost of running the social psychotherapy
centre at Fellows Road, Hampstead, N.W.3., the management of which
has been transferred from the Institute of Social Psychiatry to the North-West
Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board.
Mental Deficiency Acts, 1913-38
With the transfer of its mental deficiency institutions to the regional hospital
boards, the Council was left with the duties, under the Mental Deficiency Acts, of
ascertaining what persons in the County are suffering from mental deficiency;
providing suitable supervision for mentally deficient persons or taking steps to
secure that they are placed under institutional care or guardianship when necessary;
and providing training or occupation for those under supervision or guardianship.
Engaged in these duties from four district offices are the equivalent of 3¼ fulltime
medical officers, five inspectors, four local organisers and twenty-seven assistants.
Apart from the medical staff, all these officers are women social workers, most of
them possessing a social science certificate or diploma.
In placing cases under guardianship, the Council has continued to avail itself
of the services of the Guardianship Society, Brighton, and of the National Association
for Mental Health.
Patients are conveyed to institutions by the Council's officers in private cars
specially hired for the purpose, unless an ambulance is necessary.