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was completed and opened at the end of the year. It is intended that the programme
in this Centre shall be an experimental one and it is hoped that some lessons will
be learnt which could be applied in the two 150-place adult training centres which
the Council are proposing to build in the 10-Year Plan.
Residential Care of Adult Subnormals
The demands for residential placement for adults who do not need hospital
admission naturally grows yearly as parents become elderly or die. The Council
has continued to make private placements as often as possible but, appreciating
the increasing difficulty of obtaining such placements, plans have been made for
two 24-place hostels for trainable adult mentally subnormal young men and women
and it is hoped that one of these will be included in the earliest possible building
programme when the present financial restrictions are lifted.
Mental Illness
This Borough is fortunate in having close co-operation not only with its
catchment hospital, Knapsbury, but also with the general and teaching hospital
psychiatric units in Greater London. This allows for greater flexibility in the
arrangements for treatment of residents of this Borough. Relationships are
particularly constructive with the Marlborough Day Hospital, St. John's Wood, and
the psychiatric unit of the Middlesex Hospital, St. Luke's-Woodside, Muswell Hill.
The envisaged run down of the population of the general psychiatric hospitals
has not yet had a great impact on the community services but much greater demands
both on capital expenditure for buildings and on manpower will be made with
increasing momentum in future years. This is quite obvious since the future
government policy is for a substantial amount of psychiatric work to be done at
units attached to District General Hospitals with a rapid turn over of patients.
The Mental Health Social Workers continue to operate from Ravenscroft House,
Wood Street, Barnet but, during the year, there have been changes in organisation
designed to meet the need for comprehensive social work structure capable of
coping with the changing conditions under which the field staff now work and with
all the new aspects of, and approaches to, the problems of mental illness and
subnormality.
The Mental Welfare Officers' statutory duties and obligations under the Mental
Health Act 1959 to act in psychiatric emergencies, are still covered by a 24
hour night and day, throughout the year, emergency service. However, it has been
clearly demonstrated that emergency work can be markedly diminished by skilful
and regular social work allied to early psychiatric referral. Because of the
complexity of the service the Field Workers need to be fully experienced and
qualified in social work. Progress is being made in the recruitment of qualified
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