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Every year a number of children of the above category are
reported to the Local Health Authority and are dubbed, for the
sake of convenience in administration, as " Mentally Defective,"
and their fate henceforward is decided by the Committee which
deals with mental defectives. These children, though sub-normal,
are not in any sense mentally defective and therefore should not be
classified as such. Some of the educationally sub-normal children
are referred to the Local Health Authority for " care and protection
" (i) because their social environment is not secure, either
because they have no parents or one or other parent is dead or
missing, or one parent has re-married; (ii) their mental acumen is
not very bright and therefore they may be easily led astray; (iii)
danger of immoral taint in the family.
The term " mental defective" should not be applied.
Another point of great urgency is the housing of people who
are mentally ill. Local Authorities are doing very little to alleviate
the emotional distress of members of the public who are ill-housed
or living with in-laws or sharing a house with other people. It is
very difficult to see what local authorities can do, but the emotional
strain is very great and in the case of children is often heartrending.
In 1952 your Public Health Committee suggested combining a
Welfare Home and Flatlets for old people as a gesture for Conoration
Year. If this project could be brought about it would permit
old people a social life of their own and also facilitate the nursing
and welfare of these people in a concentrated form. This would
relieve the overburdened wards of hospitals and would certainly
be cheaper and save the necessity in many instances of these old
people going into an institution.
Health Education.—This is still struggling along to fill a
great need in the complicated system of our present-day societv.
It is our duty as citizens to overcome the hostile environment in
which we live and to make easier the attainment of certain fundamental
human needs. Our standard of life is becoming dailv
more complicated and great numbers of purposeless, bewildered
and perplexed people need the adjustment which is beyond their
unaided ability. The result is frequently an intolerable situation
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