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33
the workshops may live; 4. Providing them with suitable work in their
own homes or elsewhere; 5. Helping them to dispose of the produce of
their work; 6. Providing them with recreational facilities in their own
homes or elsewhere; 7. Compiling and maintaining classified registers
of such persons.
Those persons in need of care and attention falling to be dealt with by
the Welfare Department are distinguished from the other group who need
medical or nursing care and attention and who are the responsibility of the
hospital authorities. A rough line of demarcation is whether or not the
person is bed-ridden. The duty of the Welfare Authority in regard to
those needing care and attention, not medical or nursing care and attention,
is to provide accommodation. Their duties do not extend to making for
such people arrangements comparable to those it is their duty to make for
the blind, the deaf and dumb or physically handicapped. This is so much
the case that it would seem that the position is that the Welfare Officer has
no strict duties in regard to a person deemed to be in need of care and
attention but who is not prepared to go to a welfare home. In the same
way the Welfare Officer has no well-defined duties in regard to people
who really are not managing too well by themselves but who he feels have
not reached the stage of being classed as needing care and attention and
therefore admission to a welfare home.
For the administration of the Welfare Service the County is divided into
the same ten areas as for the County Council's functions under Part III
of the National Health Service Act. Acting under the supervision of the
Chief Welfare Officer for the County there is in each Area a Welfare
Officer. The one for this district is Mr. H. G. Plummer, "Kynaston
Court," Boxtree Road, Harrow Weald. The County Council now has
some 2,600 beds, most of them in about fifty old people's homes, in and
around the County; the only one of these homes in this district is that at
79 Bessborough Road. In addition the County Council pays for about
1,100 beds in homes run by voluntary organisations.
Although the Health Department of the District Council is often
approached by those concerned that people apparently not fit to be
living alone are not being helped, it would seem that a District Council as
such has no direct powers or responsibilities in the matter unless circumstances
are sufficiently bad to warrant action under Section 47 of the
National Assistance Act, to obtain the removal of the person to a welfare
home or hospital. That District Councils are not directly involved is
understandable in that what needs to be done is essentially a personal
service, and District Councils were divested of those personal services for
which they were responsible in 1948.
Indirectly a District Council can help by using powers under two
cts, powers perhaps which were never intended to be used in this way at
the time the acts were passed. The one is Section 4 of the Physical Training
and recreation Act 1937 which refers to clubs, etc. having athletic, social
and educational objects. The other is Section 31 of the National Assistance
act, 1948 under which a local authority may make contributions to the
funds of any voluntary organisation whose activities consist in or include
the provision of recreation or meals for old people.