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Exhibitions and Displays
Undoubtedly the highlight of the year in health education was the display
stands erected in the "Our Enfield Exhibition' 67" One stand depicted the work
of the environmental health section relating to food hygiene and testing, noise
abatement, smoke control and improvement grants, and another showed the
personal health services and the location of Health Department premises on an
illuminated visitor-participation map.
The Health Department provided the Home Safety section and the "Accident
Prevention" stand, which also depicted road and industrial safety. Health education
films were included in the film show programme given in the exhibition cinema.
Nearly 50,000 people visited the exhibition, which was open from 10.30 a.m. to
9 p.m. every week-day from the 16th to the 30th September, and was adjudged a
highly successful venture. Certainly the great interest shown in the health exhibits
was gratifying, and I am particularly grateful to the volunteer professional and
technical staff who manned the stands throughout the exhibition.
(See Statistical Tables 20, 21,22,23 and 24)
MENTAL HEALTH
It is the duty of a local health authority to provide Mental Health Services
under the Mental Health Act, 1959, and subject to the provisions of Section 28 of
the National Health Service Act, 1946.
The shift of emphasis from hospital care to community care, introduced by
the Mental Health Act, is a continuing process and, coupled with an ever-increasing
incidence in mental ill-health, constitutes a growing demand for these services.
Nowhere is the development of community care services more evident than
in the provision of residential accommodation. For those recovering from mental
illness, increasing use is now made of the council's "Windsmill" Recuperative
class of patient. The council has, as yet, no home or hostel for the mentally subHostel
with proportionately less recourse to voluntary homes and hostels for this
normal for which there is an increasing need. It is hoped, during 1968, to commence
building a 20-place short-stay hostel for children. In recognition of the need to
extend this form of care for adults, the council's Ten-Year Plan in this regard
was amended to advance to 1969 a hostel planned for 1972 in addition to the hostel
listed for 1968.
At the end of the year, the total of all classes of the mentally disordered maintained
in residential accommodation, whether local authority hostels, homes run by
voluntary associations or in private households, was 80 of both sexes. The corresponding
figures for the end of 1966 and 1965 were 59 and 44 respectively.
These figures together with approaches by hospitals indicate that the substitution
of hostel accommodation for long-term hospital care, in appropriate cases, is
now gathering momentum.
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