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assessments to applicants on request, that the organising staff as far as possible should
verify expenses claimed by applicants by scrutiny of rent books, insurance policies, etc.,
and that home helps be encouraged to collect charges, a contribution card to be made
available to the applicant, in whose custody it should remain, for immediate temporary
acknowledgment by the home help.
Consideration was proposed of the provision of post-entry training for assistant
home help organisers and the suggestion was made that consultation with the Institute
of Home Help Organisers should be effected in this connection.
It was considered that all home helps working in tuberculous households should be
chest X-rayed and Mantoux tested as a routine before employment in such households
and be X-rayed periodically afterwards. The desirability of all home helps being X-rayed
on engagement and periodically thereafter should also be considered.
Other matters dealt with by the working party included standards of accommodation
for home help offices, liaison with Old Peoples' Welfare Committees and the recommendation
was made that except where required for statutory or legal purposes the
domestic help service in London should be referred to as the ' home help service'.
The concluding section of the report of the working part was as follows :
' We have found the enquiry one of absorbing interest. The information and data
included in our report present a picture of the Council's home help service which has
not hitherto been available in such comprehensive form. We submit our recommendations
in the confidence that their implementation will increase the efficiency of
the home help service. It is of the first importance that it should be closely integrated
with other branches of the personal health services.
' The scope and growth of the home help service are clearly shown. In spite of a
reduction since 1953 by half an hour in the average weekly amount of service to each
patient the total cost has continued to rise and is estimated to reach the considerable
figure of -£846,000 for the current financial year. There is no evidence that the
demand for assistance will lessen ; rather is the number of cases, particularly of the
chronic sick, aged and infirm (92.9 per cent. of the total number at 30th September,
1956) likely to increase. We do not regard the amount of service given as over
generous. A home help service is now securely established as an essential feature of
the functions falling to be discharged by a local health authority. It will be apparent
from our report that we have been unable to make any proposals for large-scale
economies. Matters of that kind would appear to involve questions of policy, for
determination by the Council.'
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