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88
RESEARCH
It is our experience that about once a year we receive a new
request to help with a Survey or Research project. In spite of
the fact that our resources remain fully stretched, every such
request receives sympathetic consideration.
At the end of 1969, the Paediatric Research Unit of Guy's
Hospital approached the Medical Officer of Health for help with
their Survey on the role of radiation in damage to the foetus.
The details of work involved, the findings and conclusions
of the Survey will be covered in the Annual Report for 1970.
DRUG ABUSE
On publication of Councillor Simon Randall's booklet,
"Drugs in Your Town", Bromley found itself spot-lighted by the
national Press and other mass media. This was matched by wide
publicity, interest and discussion evoked locally. Until then the
Section's involvement with the problem had been limited to individual
cases and attachment of a Mental Health Social Worker
to one Youth Club where the problem persisted.
In the autumn of 1969, the Health, Welfare and Children
Committee had set up a Panel to look into Councillor Randall's
findings and conclusions and at the time of writing this Report,
the Panel had presented its recommendations to the Health,
Welfare and Children Committee. These were unanimously
accepted.
The recommendations of the Panel were, briefly, that drug
taking should be looked at in conjunction with other problems of
adolescence and should best be dealt with by a "non-authority
figure" such as a detached youth worker. The Mental Health
Section, hitherto involved on an informal basis only, will from
now on, be available to give specialist help to the detached
youth workers.
On the size of the problem the most controversial point of
"Drugs in your Town"—the Panel found that Bromley has a
problem au par with other London Boroughs, and thus supported
the Medical Officer of Health's statement quoted in the booklet
on page 16, "Our problems are not unlike those encountered by
my colleagues in other Outer Boroughs and I feel the general
trend follows the national picture".
However, only time will tell whether as some authorities
feel the contagion of drug abuse has reached its peak.