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The Clapham training centre for 100 mentally subnormal men and boys aged 16 and
over is the largest of the Council's industrial centres for the subnormal and the first to be
opened (1961) in South London. The centre includes power driven machinery. Training
aims to help those attending to make the most of their capabilities and to enjoy lives as full
and independent as possible. The emphasis is on the production of useful articles for which
contracts are negotiated with local firms and the Council's own supplies organisation.
Premises—The very extensive housing developments in the Roehampton area led first
to the establishment of welfare centres in hired premises and next to their replacement by
Victoria Drive centre (within the ‘ shell’ of a house partially erected before the war) and
by the William Harvey centre. This purpose built centre was opened in July 1959 on the
Council's Ashburton Estate at Roehampton. The two-storey centre is incorporated into a
three-storey block of flats and has been planned to provide a full range of clinical services.
There are clinics for expectant mothers, and young children; a child guidance clinic staffed
by part-time psychiatrist, psychotherapist, psychologist and social worker; and for school
children, minor ailment clinics, consultative ophthalmic and orthoptic clinics staffed by the
hospital service.
It is a curious fact that hitherto no hospital or clinic has borne the name of the eminent
physician renowned as the discoverer of the circulation of the blood. William Harvey spent
the declining years of his life in a house at Roehampton not far from where the centre now
stands.
Older areas of the division were not neglected although here the problem of development
is clearly much more difficult. It was possible, however, with the co-operation of the
Battersea Borough Council, to provide the St. Christopher's combined welfare and school
treatment centre on the ground floor of a block of flats in 1961.
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