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Special
home
helps
A short training course has been given to selected home helps to enable them to work
with health visitors in the homes of families in danger of break-up. The aim is to teach
the rudiments of housecraft to mothers of such families in an endeavour to keep the
home together and so prevent the children from having to be received into care. The
training of selected home helps was undertaken in two periods. During the first period
49 were trained and were ready to undertake their special duties by 1st May. During the
first 6 months of the scheme (from 1st May), 49 families (involving 212 children)
received the special help, the service given ranging from 1 hour to 8 hours a day. When
a measure of improvement becomes apparent, the amount of service given is gradually
reduced, so that the mother may progressively accept more responsibility for the running
of the home. Not all of the home helps were given assignments during the first 6 months
and some attended more than one family. In all but 7 cases no difficulty was experienced
in obtaining the entry of the home help for her special duties. Some improvement was
noted in 44 families helped. The scheme has been in operation too short a time to assess
its value, but experience of the first 6 months' working is encouraging. Throughout,
the closest liaison has been maintained between health visitors, home help organisers,
special home helps and, where appropriate, school care committees.
Review of
service
In June a working party, composed of officers of the public health department, began
enquiries into the home help service under the following terms of reference :
' To review the domestic help service and to make recommendations as would
appear to be both practicable and desirable, having particular regard to :
(i) comments on the service made in the report of the Reviewing Committee
of the work, organisation and staffing of the Public Health Department,
and
(ii) the report on the subject by the field workers of the Director of Establishments'
Branch of the Clerk of the Council's Department.'
By the end of the year the working party had completed their investigations, which
included visiting the 31 home help offices in the county, and their report published in
February, 1957, was subsequently approved by the Council.
The recommendations of the working party were mainly directed to ensuring greater
uniformity in standards of service throughout the county by way of strengthening
divisional supervisory arrangements and holding more frequent meetings of home help
organisers and other officers such as tuberculosis care organisers, hospital almoners,
superintendents of district nursing associations and representatives of other services as
might be appropriate to discuss problems in which the responsibilities of these officers
were interrelated. Furthermore certain desirable standards of home visiting by organising
staff were postulated.
The working party came to the conclusion that it was undesirable from the point of
view of effective supervision and proper employment of organisers that districts should
be disproportionately large or small, despite the fact that the number of assistant
organisers and clerks who supported them might accord with an overall case load. For
this reason recommendations were put forward for a limited adjustment in district
boundaries ; the general observation being made that wherever possible the size of home
help districts should be such that they were not called upon to deal with more than 1,000
cases or less than 500 cases on the books.
A considerable number of improvements in procedure was proposed for introduction,
including a revised basic records system in home help offices which would be implemented
initially in two divisions preliminary to its general adoption.
The co-operation existing with general practitioners was welcomed and it was
recommended that home help organisers should be encouraged to develop to the fullest
possible extent the practice of consulting general practitioners regarding their patients'
needs of home help, especially if there were any doubt as to the need on medical grounds.
It was recommended that the assessment of charges for services be undertaken by the
organising staff, with check and guidance where necessary, who should give provisional
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