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also visited the centre in addition to the party from Cork and the special visitors
mentioned earlier in this report in connection with Mental Health Week and tne
International Congress. Visitors' comments indicated that they were favourably
impressed by the many facets of the training programmes carried out and the level
of attainment reached.
Hospital Admissions
There is an acute shortage of hospital beds for severely subnormal patients
and South Ockendon Hospital has a long waiting list. Four Enfield patients were
admitted for permanent hospital care during 1968 but at the end of the year sixteen
were on the waiting list including eight particularly urgent cases. To relieve this
unhappy situation, the Council continued the maintenance of two severely subnormal
children in residential homes pending their eventual transfer to hospital,
but both children died during the year.
Guardianship
Placing a patient under guardianship does not confer extra powers to provide
services that are available to mentally disordered persons within the community
under Section 28 of the National Health Service Act, 1946. It merely provides
powers, such as control over the patient's place of residence and his everyday life,
which may be necessary in the case of a small minority of patients for their own
welfare.
In general, the duties of guardians are to act in the absence or unsuitability of
the parents, and their powers are similar to those of a father over a child under the
age of fourteen years.
Three persons were under the formal guardianship of the Council at the end
of the year, suitable accommodation being provided in each case.
Residential Accommodation and Informal Foster Care
Since there are, as yet, no homes or hostels in the borough for the mentally
subnormal, various voluntary homes and local authority hostels are used for the
informal accommodation of selected cases. So far as is possible, contact is maintained
between patients and their families. Arrangements are made with the local
health authority in which the homes are situated to ensure continuity of supervision
and. in addition, the Principal Medical Officer for Mental Health visits each case
and reports on the placement. The Guardianship Society, Hove, continues to provide
suitable foster homes for twenty Enfield residents, eleven of whom attend training
centres in the Brighton area.
At the end of the year, the number of mentally subnormal persons maintained
in residential homes and hostels and in informal foster care was 52, including nine
children.
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