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branch of the Alcoholics Anonymous Society meeting once a week.
Other handicapped groups such as Spastics, Infantile Paralysis Fellowship,
Diabetics and Multiple Sclerosis are members of other groups
in the district, already well established.
The District Officer, makes the interesting observation that need
for financial care and after care of tuberculous patients is declining.
The Care Committee spent over £500 in 1955, whereas the present
expenditure is just over £300. He also reports that there was a marked
increase in applications for admission to Old Persons Homes. The
publicity attendant on efforts by voluntary organisations to assess the
number of old persons needing flats with or without a resident Warden
Service, may have contributed to this increase. Many old persons
previously fit and independent may have had their resistance and morale
lowered by the cold and influenza epidemics in 1957. It is particularly
difficult to find the actual number of old persons over 70 years of age,
who are in need of, or who would benefit from more care and supervision.
Vigorous efforts are being made by various associations to
compile such a list. The final list for admission to Old Persons Homes
will need to be very carefully pruned to avoid an undue bias of overhelpfulness,
or failure to recognise types of persons who are not good
" mixers " and whose health would suffer from well-meant efforts to
enforce this removal from their familiar surroundings to Old Persons
Homes. These are the problems already recognised in the Geriatric
Units of our general hospitals.
The report of the Centre Organiser of the Women's Voluntary
Service refers to the Clubs for the elderly and also to the Meals on
Wheels service for invalids and single elderly persons who cannot cook
for themselves. The cost of this midday meal was reduced by 3d. to
1/- during the summer and this reduction is regarded as permanent.
Thirty to forty two-course meals are cooked at the W.V.S. Centre in
Bromley Road, and are taken round in a Van. The round normally
takes about two hours. The need for such a service is clear when one
considers a detailed list set out later in the report under Housing
Medical Applications.
It seems unlikely that the waiting list for places in Homes will be
appreciably reduced for years to come, so that services such as
Chiropody, Meals on Wheels, Emergency Help Schemes, and visiting
will need to be expanded, and more helpers for these services are
urgently required.
On the Mental Health side, changes in procedure in future will
increase the need for community services and visiting, and diminish
admissions to such hospitals as Cane Hill Hospital and Farnborough
which serve this area.
On the environmental health side, the expert is being increasingly
called upon for advice in the examination of foodstuffs and in the
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