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star. The one star would do the simplest kind of housework; two star has taken a
course in housewifery, laundry and cookery; three star gains a Red Cross Home Nursing
Certificate or its equivalent; and four star specialises in some form of voluntary nursing
and is anxious to look after new mothers and babies and mentally handicapped people,
or children whose parents are missing through being in hospital, or some other particular
problem of human life.
I, however, do not feel I would like to see a service developing which had these four
levels of standard of staff. I believe that it would lead to a rigid pattern of service which
I hope the home help service will never produce. I look forward to the time when all
home helps receive adequate training along the lines done by many authorities though
perhaps not available to sufficient home helps.
Take the one in my own County of Essex for example. The course there lasts
two weeks and contains lectures and practical demonstrations on family budgeting and
household management, food values, the care of invalids, prevention of spread of infection,
laundry, prevention of accidents in the home, first aid in the home, practical
work in bed making etc., cookery, something of the welfare services for the aged and
handicapped, the care of children and infants. This type of course, supplemented by
information from the organiser, can equip a home help to meet many situations in her
daily work. As far as the four grades of qualification are concerned, I am sure that at
present most organisers, if they are worth their salt, and providing they have sufficient
staff available, allocate to different types of case different types of helps. This allocation
of the right type of help is, I believe, one of the most important jobs done by home help
organisers.
I maintain that the training I have outlined, with a little elaboration, perhaps with a
lecture on mental illness and its implications, together with correct briefing by the
organiser or her assistant, who in her turn should receive the correct medical information,
will give the home help all the insight she requires to do her job. It should enable her
to recognise the early signs of something wrong and when there is a need to secure the
services of some other worker more appropriate to deal with the problem than herself.
She will be able to take charge of a home, feeling secure that the knowledge of a background
of experience and information makes it possible for her to deal with difficulties
to ensure that the patient receives the basic essentials of home medical care and able to
perform adequately the necessary toilet for the sick patient.
Some indication of the future direction in which the service will go can be gathered
from the report of the Minister of Health Part I for 1961.
This shows the similar expansion to that which has taken place in some of the areas
which were investigated and whose Annual Reports were read. The figures for 1953
and 1961 are compared, and the figure for instance for 1953 gives percentages; the
percentage of old age and chronic sick in 1953 was 58%.but in 1961 were 76%. There
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