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54
towards personal independence that often decides whether elderly parents
can continue to look after the subnormal child at home or whether they
will reluctantly have to ask for a hospital bed.
At present there is no Adult Training Centre in the Borough and
young people from Harrow have to travel by coach each day to Uxbridge,
where there is a waiting list of children. Because of this, and because there
were children in the senior class at the Junior Training School who were
ready for a fuller programme of social training, Committee approval was
obtained in January, 1966 to the Borough setting up a Transition Class
until such time as it is possible for the Authority to have its own purposebuilt
Aduh Training Centre.
This class serves several useful purposes. Cases who were on the
waiting list for the Uxbridge Adult Training Centre, and a number of
children in the senior class at the Junior Training School were admitted
to this twenty place Transition Class which was opened in the Autumn
of 1966 and held in the games room at the rear of Tanglewood Hostel,
Common Road, Stanmore. This made it possible for places to be made
available lower down the School for the 14 children of 7 years of age and
under who were awaiting admission. Instead of an abrupt transition from
school to a full working day, an imaginative programme of basic social
training was started, enabling the older children to become more
independent than in the past and experience gained from this experimental
pilot scheme will prove invaluable in planning the new Adult Training
Centre.
The curriculum includes all types of domestic training for both boys
and girls as the hostel is used for practical teaching purposes. Most of the
residents of the hostel are out at work all day so that the children's mid-day
meal is taken in the residents' dining room. The garden and grounds offer
scope for games and physical activities as well as simple gardening and
maintenance, and the resident's laundry is large enough for a small class
and the toilet and washing facilities are adequate for these 20 children who
are roughly between the ages of 14 and 18. A supply Supervisor originally
based at the Junior Training School has been placed in charge of this
experiment and has an Assistant Supervisor and a General Duties
Assistant helping her. The system of monetary awards in operation at the
Adult Training Centre has not been instituted, as this class is regarded as
an extension of the Junior Training School and in no way a sheltered
workshop. Classes are held from 9.30 a.m. to 3.30 p.m., Monday to Friday,
and there are the usual primary school holidays in the district.
At the end of the year there were 109 children on the School's
register—97 attending the School and 12 the Transition Class. These
figures include 33 children from other Authorities.
Orderlies.—There are 3 Orderlies employed at the School. These are
senior girls who show an aptitude for domestic work or for work in the
nursery class with the babies and who have elected to stay on in preference