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14
The foregoing remarks are perhaps not directly related to the care
of the aged because age may not be by any means the causative factor.
So far as concerns the actually aged, the Council is continuing by its
housing provision to contribute materially towards assisting them, and
this department also does all it can, quietly, to help anyone brought to
our notice.
Home Safety.
As was visualised in my last report a Home Safety Committee was
duly formed at a meeting held on 25th February, 1954. The District
Council subsequently made a grant of some £50 towards the first year's
workings and you are represented upon a Committee comprising many
local interests. The Committee has commenced work in an inauspicious
but practical fashion and have endeavoured by film shows, posters and
the like to arouse public interest. Additionally it has had produced a
most informative Home Safety brochure which it is intended should be
distributed through the media of the Area Health Sub-Committee, our
own Housing Department, local general practitioners and other interested
organisations.
Although the past year has seen a certain amount of publicity given
to the subject of Home Safety it would, I think, strike the casual
observer—and this means the average person—as unbelievable that
deaths through home accidents outnumber those resulting from road
accidents.
The home accident represents a relatively private happening about
which everyone naturally tends to keep as quiet as possible ; the road
accident represents news and it seems usually possible to infer the
motorist, cyclist or pedestrian as responsible depending upon the merits
of the situation, one's choice or prejudice. No such analysis so spontaneously
crops up in the case of the home accident which at the best
usually results in a review if not of all the safety factors in the home
at least of such of them as could cause a recurrence of the particular
accident.
Whether a local Council such as ours wishes to form a Home Safety
Committee of its own or not is clearly a matter entirely within their own
discretion, but if the subject of Home Safety is to be taken as seriously
as reality demands, and as some day it will have to be taken, then a
local authority should be enabled to deal with it in whatever fashion
they deem appropriate. It would be idle to pretend that Home Safety
achieves anything like a real interest in the average home.
If, however, all the local organisations which have initially displayed
an interest in the work of the newly formed Home Safety
Committee proceed practically to do all they can to further the cause
then one may be assured of a sound nucleus of effort in Hornchureh.
Like most worthwhile things, however, success cannot be achieved
merely by support in principle, and it is up to all of us to ensure that the
formation of the Hornchurch Home Safety Committee represents the
beginning of an attack and not its culmination.