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33
Recognition of the effort and achievement of Home Helps to satisfy
an external examiner that they "understand the principles and practical
application of the responsibilities and duties of a Home Help" is the
award of an appropriate certificate.
Experimentally four trained Home Helps have been allocated to two
groups of patients. The Helps work in two teams, either singly or in
pairs as the situation demands. The hours of attendance to patients in
the group system are not rigidly allocated; the Home Helps are free to
make minor adjustments of time to meet the daily changing needs of
patients.
New and unexplored avenues have been pursued in recruiting Home
Helps. University students have been employed during vacation and young
mothers are offered eight hours work a week. Two young mothers babymind
for each other; thus their joint contribution is sixteen hours service
per week.
The demand for Home Help Service for the elderly continues to increase.
Changes in the duties of Home Helps are in many cases attributable
to better housing conditions. The complicated emotional mechanism
evoked by environmental changes in later life is not a subject for this
report but the impact on the Home Help Service is indicated by the ever
increasing demand for Home Helps in blocks of flats housing elderly
people.
It is my sincere hope that I will be making future report in which
indication of the upward trend of recruiting figures may be related to the
inception of the Croydon Home Help Service training scheme.