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35
necessary for a person to be removed without delay from the place in
which he is living, an application for a removal order may be made to the
Court or of a single justice. An order made under this Section is valid
for three weeks only, an application for an extension being made under
Section 47 of the original Act.
The first case in which action had to be taken under these powers was
in December. Because of the insanitary state arising from the man's
grave illness and his refusal to agree to go to hospital, a Court Order was
applied for and granted, and the man removed to hospital.
Laundry Service. The burdens of those looking after the debilitated
elderly or chronic sick are immensely added to when that person is
incontinent, and more especially doubly incontinent. There is no information
about how common this condition is as most households
manage somehow or other to get over their difficulties. In some though,
no suitable arrangements can be made, and it is in such cases that the
Council uses its very limited powers under Section 84 of the Public
Health Act, 1936 which empowers authorities to arrange for articles to
be cleansed in certain circumstances. The local arrangements started in
1954 when the Hendon Group Hospital Management Committee agreed
to arrange for the actual work of treating the articles of clothing and
bedding to be done if the District Council would meet the cost. In no
year have any very large numbers of persons been helped at any one time.
At the beginning of last year, 10 persons were being helped. During the
year, there were requests to help a further 12 cases. Because of death or
removal from the district, the number provided with help at the end of the
year was only 9.
The period any patient had to be helped has ranged from two weeks to
three years though one person has been helped since the arrangements
started in 1954. A person once helped might not need the help to be
continued, either because he has been admitted to hospital or has died.
The average cost per week for each person being helped was about 3/-.
Towards the end of the year, the Hospital Management Committee had,
because of rises in wages and in cost of materials to raise the charge made
for each article dealt with from 4id. to 6¼d.
The limitation of the powers of the Council to help, coupled with the
fact that the ordinary laundries will not accept such soiled articles, results
in many households having to carry out this cleansing in their own homes
>n circumstances which in many cases must make this a more unpleasant
task than is faced by those who can do much of the work by machinery in
a laundry. But although what can be done to help in this way must
reduce the demands for admission of persons to hospitals and so is to
'he benefit of the hospital service, they can hardly be expected to assume
responsibility in any way for persons who are neither in hospital nor
attending as out-patients. The third Authority who might have responsibilities
for such persons is the Welfare Service. They again, at the
m°ment, have no responsibility and presumably no powers to help in
such cases. At present then it would appear that no Authority has powers
to help more than the District Council whose powers in this connection
are so very limited.