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47
Staff Structure Present and Future
Administration problems of the Section are dealt with by its
small headquarters staff at the Health and Welfare Department.
The experience of the first months of the service made clear
the need for qualified senior field staff, and three such appointments
will be made in the middle of 1966. The appointment of
senior field staff will greatly enhance the quality of the service in
addition to providing training and promotion within the service.
Facts and Figures
The Mental Health Service is concerned with two distinct
broad categories of mental disorder, namely, mental illness and
mental subnormality. The "case load" for the whole Borough is
given below:

* Children under five are supervised by health visitors.
MENTAL SUBNORMALITY
The Very Young
It is now widely accepted that every attempt should be made
to recognise mental handicap as early in life as possible, thus giving
the child an optimum chance of improvement. With this end in
view, a Register of all children suspected of being backward was
started early in April, 1965, the Health Visitors being asked to
report any such child born after 31.12.1959. On 31.12.1965, the
Register stood at 86, showing the following grouping by diagnosis:
Cause as yet unspecified or unknown 26 children
Mongol 24
Cerebral palsy 13
Hydrocephalic 9
Multiple (including sensory) defect 6
Microcephalic 5
Birth accident 2
Rare conditions 1 child
Since it was previously estimated that the Borough would have
100 severely subnormal children under the age of 5, and that it is
unavoidable that some of these children will not be known to the
Local Health Authority, the nearness of the number of cases known