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The Handicapped, the Old and the Homeless
THE HANDICAPPED
During the year applications for services have poured in to the department from handicapped
persons requiring help. Marital and domestic problems have been dealt with and there are
many persons and their families receiving constant support. Aids have been supplied to assist in
daily living, ranging from lifting hoists to special feeding cutlery. Adaptations have been carried
out to houses including the installation of downstairs toilets, stairlifts, ramps and rails fixed to
the walls.
The Occupational Therapists in the local and adjoining large general hospitals are
enthusiastically co-operating with the Health and Welfare Department in the carrying out of simple
adaptations in order that patients may be discharged from hospital to home without delay. There is
close consultation between the hospital and the local authority department on each case.
Senior school boys and girls and some voluntary organisations are also helping in doing
jobs for handicapped and old people in their own homes, a valuable contribution to an essential
service.
The two special coaches with tail lifts are being used to capacity in transporting the
physically handicapped to and from the Roberts Hall Occupation Centre, where 60 people attend
daily. The new extension to the Hall was completed early in the year and will cater for an
additional forty persons when more coaches can be purchased. There is a waiting list of over
fifty handicapped persons requiring transport in order to attend at the Occupation Centre but it
will not be possible to bring them due to the financial position (of the borough and of the country)
which has necessitated stringent pruning of expenditure and the committee's reluctant decision
not to purchase more special vehicles at the moment.
Clubs for the blind and for the physically handicapped run by voluntary organisations are
well attended, but in this activity too more transport is required. Some of the voluntary organisations
have vehicles of their own and the borough assists most of them with additional vehicles or grants
towards the cost of conveying their members to their meetings.
Holidays for the physically handicapped and the blind are provided through voluntary
organisations at camps and by the borough which block-books beds at seaside guest houses. Many
holiday and short stay care problems could be overcome if the borough were to have its own
seaside holiday home, but here again the financial situation will have to improve before further
consideration can be given to this project.
THE OLD
The task of trying to evaluate in broad terms the problems of old age is a gigantic one
for it covers so many types of person and so many individual problems.
The 'elderly' are those who have attained pensionable age, who, for the most part retain
a large measure of independence and mobility and health. The 'aged' may be of the same number
of years, but unfortunately suffer progressive loss of these faculties.
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