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103
BROMLEY CHILDREN'S AFTER-CARE COMMITTEE
FOR MENTAL DEFECTIVES.
Report for the Year 1933.
It may be remembered by those interested in the
welfare of Mental Defectives that the original purpose
with which our Committee was formed was to keep in
touch with ex-pupils of the Special School. But from the
early days of our Committee the County Council referred
to our supervision certain ineducable persons and children,
including imbeciles and idiots, whom it was thought
possible to leave in their own homes. These last we shall
continue to visit and report upon to the local authority.
The closing of the Special School, however, will for
the time being gradually diminish the number of higher
grade defectives such as we supervised before the change.
On arriving at school age high-grade defectives are
classed as dull and backward, and pass into the ordinary
elementary school.
But it is precisely these persons, so often of unstable
disposition, who present the most serious problem when
they are due to leave school, for they begin life at the age
of fourteen handicapped from the outset. As they
cannot be notified to the County Mental Deficiency
Committee until they reach the age of sixteen, during the
intervening two years, they are subject to no supervision
beyond that which they get in their own homes, where
parents sometimes find difficulty in controlling potential
or actual wage earners. The Central Association for
-Mental Welfare are aiming at legislation whereby this
two years gap may be bridged.
For the present we still visit forty-two persons who
passed through the Special School, twenty-three of whom
are employed in various occupations. Visits cease when
there is reason to believe that the defectives have acquired
some self-reliance. This happens rarely, for it is a mark
of mental deficiency that the sufferer is unable to carry
on unaided.