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lightening the burden the family has to bear, the staff cannot but
feel how much further all the supportive services would have to
develop before this help is anything like adequate. On the other
hand, the national shortage of hospital beds remains as acute as
ever. The developments on the hospital side are covered under
the heading below.
THE SUBNORMALITY HOSPITALS AND THE BOROUGH
Long Term Care
In 1967 there was a marked tightening up of criteria for
admission to hospital on a long term basis. Only cases requiring
skilled medical treatment or intense nursing care are being considered.
This ruling is very strictly adhered to, but further difficulty
is created by the fact that even when a case is accepted for
admission, the hospital authority is not able to give any indication
as to the length of time to be spent on the waiting list. This
situation, where the parents already told that their child ought
to be in hospital, have to continue to care for him with the
uncertainty whether or when the relief will come, increasingly
adds to the burden.
The increase in the number of mentally subnormals provided
with long term residential accommodation other than hospital
accommodation (Table VI) is due to these trends.

In order to implement the policy that subnormality hospitals
will contain the most severe cases only, a move started to discharge
from the hospitals cases admitted there as long as 50 years
ago. Whilst the local authority files on the patients coming out
into the community after half a century in an institution would
undoubtedly be of interest to the sociai historian, one may well
question the humanity of such a step. If, on the other hand, such
policy is aimed primarily at pressuring the local health authorities
into providing adequate residential accommodation of their own,
the timing (present economic climate) may well render the
pressure ineffective.