View report page

who themselves have a separate staff' of visiting officers. If an old
person refuses to accept an offer of residential accommodation despite
the fact that he is living in insanitary circumstances and is not receiving
due care and attention then it is the Borough Council, on my recommendation,
which secures a court order for compulsory removal.
One such case had to be dealt with under Section 47 of the National
Assistance Act during the year—an old lady living by herself in an
upstairs flat under grossly insanitary conditions and quite incapable
of looking after herself. Although unwilling to leave home she settled
down happily in St. George's Hospital and has remained there voluntarily.
I should like to record my appreciation of the assistance received
from Mr. Fisher, Area Welfare Officer, in this case.
The aged sick being nursed in their own homes, either through
choice or lack of hospital beds, have available the services of the
district nurses (administered from the Lady Rayleigh Training Home,
Leytonstone by the Training Homes Sub-Committee of the County
Health Committee), and Home Helps (Health Area Sub-Committee).
The latter Committee also has power to provide a service of night
attendants to relieve relatives in cases where the patient is restless at
night, although it was not possible to inaugurate such a service during
1953. The Committee has also made an endeavour to provide a domiciliary
chiropody service for patients confined to their beds or homes,
although the Ministry of Health has unfortunately refused to sanction
such extension to the service—allegedly on financial grounds. Such
patients are thus still brought to the clinics by ambulance (one presumes
that this costs nothing, and that the ambulances have nothing better
to do!)
In a further effort to help relatives nursing incontinent patients
at home, the Borough Council has inaugurated a laundry service
using powers under Section 84 of the Public Health Act. This service,
free to the patient, provides for the laundering of soiled articles such
as sheets and night clothes at the Barking Hospital Laundry by arrangement
with the Hospital Management Committee. Collections and
deliveries are made three times per week. Since this service commenced,
an average of five hundred articles per month have been dealt with
and seven cases were being assisted at the end of the year. The help
given to these families is invaluable.
There has been the greatest difficulty in obtaining hospital beds
for the elderly sick—even in cases of urgency. Within the Ilford and
Barking group of hospitals there are only 22 chronic sick beds—all for
women—at the Barking Hospital, and admissions are controlled by the
Page 27