View report page

30
It was reckoned that each of the visits of these Home
Helps to be effective should be of two hours duration, allowing
for an interval between cases, and that in all 17 visits
should be paid per week. It was further reckoned that a
case should be cleaned in 7 visits. Under these conditions
Home Help No. 1 should have cleaned 53 instead of only
32 cases, and Home Help No. 2 133 instead of only 91 cases.
It may be stated that the estimate of the work which should
have been done is a minimum.
It is very difficult to obtain a suitable woman to do this
class of work. If the woman is one of the less intelligent type
she requires constant supervision in order that a reasonable
standard of work may be reached. On the other hand a
woman of superior type does not care to undertake the work
of cleansing dirty children. On the whole this initial experiment
in the way of using Home Helps for the cleansing of
verminous children cannot be said to have been successful,
and it would appear necessary to establish cleansing
stations.
Leinster Road and Leopold Road Mentally Defective Schools.
These schools provide acommodation for 80 and 40
children respectively—120 in all. They have been established
with a view of educating in the best possible way
the Mentally Defective child. Both these are day schools,
and I am of opinion that such schools are not suitable for
the true Mentally Defective child, i.e., a child, who having
received chances of education is still three or more years
backward. Such a child ought to be dealt with in an
Institution, and the present Mentally Defective Schools
might very well1 be converted into day schools for children
who are merely dull, or backward, and require more individual
tuition than it is possible to give them in classes of 60
as in the ordinary Elementary Schools.