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week's intensive course arranged especially for them at Bexley, the Maudsley and Springfield
psychiatric hospitals respectively. Weekly conferences held at some of the hospitals
afforded good training facilities for staff who could be spared from their normal duties.
There was also a number of organised visits of observation to various hospitals.
Arrangements were made for some of the more senior officers to attend conferences and
residential week-end schools. Three officers attended a three-week course for mental welfare
officers and four others attended a special course for social workers for a half day each
week extending over a period of about six months.
About 24 officers attended evening courses during the year, the Council paying the
fees, on such subjects as abnormal psychology, human relations, marriage guidance,
casework principles and problems of old age.
The policy of seconding suitable officers to full-time courses was continued and during
1961 one officer so seconded completed the Mental Health Course and another commenced.
Two officers were also seconded to take the first two-year 'Younghusband'
course.
Much remains to be done in promoting the further training of social workers in the
mental health services so as to equip them to apply constructive casework principles to
their work and to give them every opportunity of keeping abreast with new and changing
ideas.
The continuance of in-service training of the training centre supervisory staff for a
recognised qualification and a possible cadet training scheme for school leavers were
suggested in the Council's proposals relating to the training centre service, but no action
had been taken at the end of the year to vary existing staff training arrangements pending
the publication of the report of a sub-committee of the standing Mental Health Advisory
Committee on the Training of Staff of Training Centres for the mentally subnormal.
Eight members of the supervisory staff successfully completed the two-year part-time
course for the diploma of the National Association for Mental Health for teachers of the
mentally handicapped which ended in 1961. Thirty-five members of the staff held the
diploma at the end of the year.
Medical and diagnostic services
Since the inception of the Mental Health Act, 1959, the medical services concerned
with the diagnosis, supervision and care of the mentally disordered have continued to
expand. The increased responsibilities placed on the Local Health Authority, the varying
legal procedures to be adopted according to the type of mental disorder from which a
patient suffers and the abolition of the Board of Control laid emphasis on the need for
accurate diagnosis and specialised medical supervision by doctors specially experienced in
this branch of medical practice. The Council maintains a team of medical officers, working
full time under a principal medical officer, which specialises in the field of mental subnormality.
These specialist medical officers are based centrally at the County Hall and are
responsible for the more difficult and complicated clinical work arising from the Local
Health Authority's duties under the Act. At the request of the divisional medical officers,
they are also available for carrying out diagnostic examinations in the divisions, where the
routine medical examinations for mental subnormality and the medical supervision of
children and adults at training centres are now carried out.
The central medical staff also have responsibilities for carrying out special examinations
at the request of the Courts or the Prison Medical Service; for exercising any necessary
medical supervision in relation to subnormal persons under guardianship or receiving
community care and for undertaking special examinations in difficult cases involving
very young children or multiple handicaps.
The initial diagnosis of mental illness in adults remains largely in the hands of general
practitioners, with the usual facilities for reference to hospital consultants when desirable.
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