View report page

The staff in the private coach company who take the children to and from the Centre made
them a gift of a day at the sea-side, a day greatly enjoyed by children and staff.
Two new students joined the staff during the year and four outside students attended for
their practical experience. Two trained assistants will be returning from College to the Centre
next Summer. Some of the students have done well in their G.C.E. examinations and could have
chosen better paid professions. Instead they have chosen to train to help in what is always a very
long uphill grind with very slow results. The Special Care Unit is the slowest group but even there
progress has occurred. Sometimes it is physical progress like learning to walk or talk, sometimes
it is the destructive and difficult who become less so. Sometimes they have injured staff, but their
injuries are accepted as part of the job.
Until a new Centre is built all the children are in four class rooms. The group of the most
severely retarded children are therefore still unable to be admitted. Some of them stay at home.
Others, with some of the younger children, attend special Play Groups held two mornings a week.
These are run by mothers from the Society for the Mentally Handicapped in two local clinics.
Although medical, nursing and physiotherapy staff visit from time to time and give help
when necessary, all the work is carried out by these mothers who have learned from helping their
own children how to care for these. Not only do the Play Groups provide relief for mothers for a
short period from their very demanding children but the children are also help by mixing with other
children and adults. When the new Junior Training Centre is completed these children will be
admitted.
We all look forward to the completion of this long awaited Centre with all its special
facilities which only a carefully planned purpose-built building can provide.
Gwyneth Richards
Senior Medical Officer - Child Care
Midwifery and Home Nursing Services
THE MIDWIFERY SERVICE operated satisfactorily throughout the year and there was an increase
in the number of patients discharged home early from hospital. The nature of the midwives practice
is gradually changing with more pre-natal and post natal care and fewer home confinements.
Close co-operation with doctors, hospitals and clinics has helped the service to run
smoothly.
ATTACHMENT SCHEMES
The allocation of midwives to General Practitioner Obstetricians works well and the
service benefits from the closer professional relationship.
- 14 -