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7
The Home Help Supervisor reports on a training scheme devised to
increase the effectiveness of the service, and to improve recruitment.
Commercial development and private employment in Croydon provide
unlimited opportunities for purely domestic cleaning work. The Home
Helps give services far exceeding these limited duties, and emphasis on
this fact, through the training scheme, should ensure skills being applied
with a sense of vocation.
The steady development of facilities for the mentally disordered
continued. The building of a Mental Health Centre and a Hostel for 39
elderly persons, too mentally confused for an ordinary Old People's
Home, commenced. An Adult Centre, to provide 100 places for physically
and 100 places for mentally handicapped persons, was completed at the
end of the year for opening in 1967. This is a major project which the
Corporation authorised after very careful consideration by the Health and
Welfare Services Committees. It is a positive contribution to the recommended
policy of the Royal Commission on mental illness, to equate
mental and physical disabilities. This policy has been pursued with forethought
and prudence, and our experiences so far indicate benefits to all
concerned. Following the established local pattern in domiciliary care
of making individual placements and providing small family group Homes,
a supervised unit for 7 mentally subnormal girls was opened, and two other
similar properties acquired for conversion. The success of schemes for
industrial rehabilitation was shown by the Ministry of Labour approving
the building of a Sheltered Workshop, to commence during 1967/68, to
replace the temporary premises now being used. They also agreed to make
substantial contributions to a short-stay Assessment and Rehabilitation
Unit to be set up in existing premises.
Cervical Cytology
A very limited service was offered for six months of the year with
anticipation of considerable expansion during 1967. The limitations were
due entirely to lack of pathological facilities, which can be provided only
by the Regional Hospital Board.
Fluoridation
This was approved in principle by the Council. There are, however,
technical difficulties which will add considerably to the costs if the
Corporation embark upon fluoridation without similar action in adjoining
areas. This is due to the fact that four separate Water Undertakings
supply the Borough with mixing in one area of the town. Action has therefore
been deferred in the hope that there may be unaninimity which resolves
these technical difficulties.