View report page

73
Junior Training Centre, "Woodbrook"
This long awaited Centre in Beckenham, which will incorporate
a Kindergarten and a Special Care Unit and accommodate
80 children, is in the "builders on the site" stage, and the opening
is anticipated for Summer, 1969.
Closing Comments
The Annual Report has by its very nature to be factual with
the facts speaking for themselves.
The staff, field officers and seniors alike, have given of their
best and were rewarded by the show of confidence from the
community, the voluntary organisations, the general practitioners
and the hospital service.
The supportive community services and the Training Centre
have successfully completed yet another year's work. However,
in writing this report one kept one's thoughts on the problems
which will follow in the wake of the facts reported. The reader
will by now appreciate that many items are missing. The trends
away from hospital care cannot be reversed and the need for local
authority establishments, day and residential, is bound to get even
more acute.
Missing from the Report are hostels for subnormal children
and subnormal adults, a long-stay hostel for mentally ill, all
envisaged in the Council's Three Year Plan. The short-term
hostel will lose its function unless long-term placements are
available to absorb its "failures".
A sheltered workshop as a place of work for people not
capable to enter or re-enter open employment is also missing.
The Day Centre does not cater for these needs.
In a sentence, the Report on the Mental Health Services
in 1967 is saying, "Well done—but a great deal more will have
to be done."