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Castle day rehabilitation centre, which opened officially in July 1964, had already begun
admitting mentally ill patients early in the year. An encouraging number of these have been
rehabilitated and have returned to work, including some who had spent many years in
hospital.
St. Olave's hospital has been a focal point for much mental health community care in
Bermondsey and part of Southwark. Social workers and occupational therapists are provided
by the Council for the day hospital. Patients admitted to the psychiatric in-patient unit
for short-term treatment may pass from there through the day hospital and into the community
with the Council's social workers keeping in touch at every stage. A further link
between this hospital and the community has been the appointment of an additional
occupational therapist to share her time equally between working in the day hospital and
visiting house-bound psychiatric patients in the community.
Co-ordinating committee—The committee began as a result of the need that was felt for
the prevention of child neglect and ill treatment and juvenile delinquency, and in the hope
of reducing the necessity for reception of children into care. It has brought together members
of the staffs of Council departments, statutory and voluntary organisations concerned and
led to a great improvement in mutual understanding.
The divisional co-ordinating committee has met at regular intervals for policy and
reviewing, under the chairmanship of the divisional medical officer and with the divisional
treatment organiser (later divisional social worker) as secretary. Intermediate case conferences
on individual families, to which field workers from every agency concerned and
the family doctor are invited, are held as frequently as required and there has been an
increased number of field-level conferences, at school medical inspections, in M. and C.W.
centres and care committee offices, etc. to avoid both duplication and confusion in immediate
action. This remains the structure of the work in the division today but the outlook
has changed from the original plan of collaboration in known cases of neglect or suspected
neglect to close collaboration at much earlier stages, aiming at long-term educative work to
remove or modify possible causes rather than to deal with effects. A number of services and
routines have been evolved to further this end.
A rent guarantee scheme, worked out by the divisional co-ordinating committee, was
later accepted for the county. Specially selected home helps were given brief appropriate
training to prevent breakdown in the home and used, with considerable success, in rehabilitating
some inadequate and discouraged mothers or in helping fathers who have undertaken
to look after their children without a mother. Residential rehabilitation has also been tried
in a few cases, but with less success, local experience being that very disorganised families
may manage in sheltered conditions but they tend to break down again on return to the
normal community.
There was, however, an obvious need for additional case work service in the community
and the co-ordinating committee gave every support from the earliest discussions to the
establishment of the South London Family Service Unit; indeed the first organiser of the
unit was housed in a school treatment centre until the unit found its own premises. Collaboration
with the Family Service Unit has remained very close, a high proportion of the
families with whom the unit has worked throughout having been referred through intermediate
case conferences called for the purpose, at which Family Service Unit workers are,
of course, present. Following the appointment of public health caseworkers to the division
in September 1963 the same procedure has been used in allocating their families.
Rent arrears were recognised very quickly to be a symptom of social circumstances which
might well lead to neglect or breakdown and a routine for their early notification to the
co-ordinating committee, by both Council and borough housing departments, was established
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