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them. I think it is particularly important that the Organiser should have knowledge of
the type of cases I mentioned, so that she can communicate to the home help as much
information as she feels necessary.
(ii) Special services
I would like now to say a few words about the contribution the home help can
make to the problem family. Her main contribution to my mind is of course teaching
which she may give in the home in a practical way. She can show the mother, for example,
how to protect food from contamination by flies, she can show the mother the correct
way to dispose of her refuse, she can teach her how to care for her children, she can
show her the need for a fire guard, the need for prevention of home accidents, she can
teach her how to budget and to cook and to provide the right diet for her family. In this
way she can exert an enormous influence on the problem family mother which I believe
no other person is in a position to exert.
As far as acute illness is concerned this presents problems varying with the urgency
of the case. There is a great tendency in many families for mother to carry on although
she is not fit to do so, and it is in exactly these cases where the home help could be of
extreme value providing her assistance is made available quickly. She may in fact be
responsible, as in the complications of pregnancy, for avoiding admission to hospital or
for hurrying on mother's convalescence.
Before I go on to the future of the service, I would just like to consider for a few
moments the break-down into categories of 403 elderly patients cared for in Dagenham
by the home help service. Certain ones head the list which is reproduced in full in the
synopsis of my paper; arthritis, 122 out of 403 heads the list. We can visualise the
medical assistance which the home help can give in these cases and I do not propose to
go through the list in detail, it in no way pretends to be a complete survey. One would
like to see such a survey done on a national basis or perhaps even on an international
basis, but it does give some idea of the types of case we have dealt with in my own area.
It was very kindly supplied by the home help organiser for the area, Miss Hickinbotham.
Complaint No. of patients
Arthritis 122
Heart 61
Hypertension 34
Bronchial 53
Rheumatism 26
Stroke 25
Blind or partially blind 17
Varicose veins and/or ulcers 99
Cateract 9
Mental 7
Asthma 5
Parkinson’s disease 5
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