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11
To:
THE MAYOR, ALDERMEN AND COUNCILLORS OF
THE LONDON BOROUGH OF BROMLEY
Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have the honour to present a Report for the year 1970 on
the services administered by the Health and Welfare Department
of the London Borough of Bromley.
The Local Authority Social Services Act, 1970, will lead to
the creation on the 1st April, 1971, of a Social Services Department,
and as a consequence a separate Health Department. The new
Department will deal in the main with the activities of the former
Children's Services, Welfare Services, Mental Health Services, Home
Help Service, Recuperative Care Service and T.B. After-Care
Service, previously provided by the Health and Welfare and
Children's Departments.
As one of the outstanding achievements of the Health and
Welfare Department has been the development of the Mental
Health Services of the Borough, it is appropriate that the final
complete Report of this Department should include a review of
the expansion of this service from 1st April, 1965, to 31st December,
1970. The Report speaks for itself. I would only make two
comments; first, that when in April 1971 the two year old purpose
built training centre, Woodbrook, passes to the control of the
Education Committee and the other establishments and services
to the control of the Social Services Committee, the leeway in
these services inevitably inherited from former Authorities will
have been made up and a firm base established for a more
sophisticated and broader front advance of these services in the
future; second, in the further reorganisation already appearing on
the horizon, and in the interim period, the Health Department will
try to maintain the essentially twin character of Health and Social
Services which had developed primarily as a consequence of the
wise inauguration in 1965 of a combined Department. This now
becomes even more necessary for the practical implementation of
such statutory measures as the Chronically Sick and Disabled
Persons Act, 1970, and similar measures must depend on proper
communications and collaboration between your Health Department
and the new Social Services Department.
Statistics
Though the birth rate was 0.1 higher than the previous year
it is still below that for Greater London and England and Wales
and the number of live births again fell. There was a disturbing
rise in the number of still births and equally disturbing to note
that two of these were associated with domiciliary confinements.
The table setting out Deaths from Cancer over a five year