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Table III. gives details of the number of cases dealt with by the
social workers during the year.
Close liaison is maintained with the maternity and child welfare
service, and all cases referred to the department under 5 years of age are
continued to be visited by the Health Visitors after initial visits by the
Principal Medical Officer and Mental Health Social Worker. Every
assistance continues to be given to relatives with any problems they
may have concerning the patients.
Guardianship.—This Authority at present has no cases placed under
guardianship.
Informal Foster Care.—Nineteen patients were placed in private
homes under Informal Foster Care, 5 of these are placed in foster homes
within the Borough. The total number of cases still under such care at
the end of the year was 19.
Admissions to Hospitals.—Five patients were admitted to hospital
for permanent care, all of which were informal admissions. At the end of
the year there were only 3 patients awaiting admission to hospital.
Temporary Care.—25 requests were received during the year for
patients to receive short term care, in order to give families some respite
from their care. Of these, 18 were placed in hospitals, the remainder in
private homes or hostels.
Harrow Junior Training School.—The total number of children
on the register at the beginning of 1966 was 106. This figure included 14
children from Hillingdon, 8 from Ealing, 6 from Brent, 2 from Barnet,
1 from Houndslow and 1 from Croydon — the last four cases being
children placed under informal foster care within the Borough by their
respective Authorities. Mentally handicapped children remain at this
School until their sixteenth birthday, when they are transferred to an Adult
Training Centre and from then on are expected to play their part in an
industrial working programme where the emphasis is on commercial
production.
Although in the early 1950s this more realistic approach to the
possibility of a mentally handicapped young person being able to do
a worth-while day's work under sheltered factory conditions for which a
wage packet was received at the end of the week was welcomed, it is now
realised that if these young people are to continue to live in the community
a much wider basic social training must be provided, as well as teaching
them how to work. Experience has shown that many of these young
people are not mature enough at 16 to move from the rather sheltered
"academic" life of the Junior Training School to a full day's work under
factory conditions, where the emphasis must be put on speed and output if
assembly and contract work are to be delivered on time. Many of them are
only just beginning to take an interest in elementary 3-R work, in simple
cookery, sewing and domestic work, and it is this basic social training