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7. Very Near Bus Routes - which bring friends; and encourage the old to the shops, which
gives them business and company.
MONEY is a basic requirement for old and other people and old people do not have
enough. Food is, it seems, adequate, though perhaps not always so by some academic standards;
money has to be very short before protein, for instance, becomes deficient in the diet. But when
old people have not enough money, heating is a usual economy, and the quality of life suffers.
Also money for travelling to see friends; and necessaity for the old; usually they don't have
sufficient, and this is a considerable cause for their deterioration.
OCCUPATION - A few older persons apply themselves to work which they think is
important though unpaid; but for the vast majority a dignified occupation means work which is paid.
"Work" means work within one's capacity; and in fact the old retain considerable capacity
for suitable work, but lose it rapidly in disuse.
"Paid" means paid at a non-derisory market rate.
Older people can only rarely get paid work on these terms, and sometimes they prefer not
to. Moreover the National Assistance Scheme isfrequently so operated as to make it seem clear to
the old that their work would not be worthwhile.
Of these deficiencies from the requirements of old people in regards to housing, money
and occupation: the first seems in itself the most impossible of cure, and the last that which is
least likely to be remedied ever; but the need of the old for more money is the most cruel; for the
means but not the intention of amendment are close at hand.
F.John Goodey
Senior Medical Officer - Community Care
Chiropody Service
Chiropody in Waltham Forest has been well maintained, the actual number of treatments
having increased due to a full establishment. We now have eleven full-time staff, the remainder
being made up of part-time chiropodists. In January Miss Keeffe from Australia was appointed to
our full-time staff, to take over the Hatch Lane Chiropody Clinic in Chingford. This made us six
sessions above our establishment, and in pruning our part-time chiropodists we lost fourteen
sessions, instead of our wanted six, the eight sessions all being in the south of the borough.
The Domiciliary Service is very popular from the patients' point of view, but we are still
having difficulty in recruiting part-time staff for this work as at least one adjoining borough is
paying the Whitley Scale, while we pay the Clinical Sessional rate.
During the year one of our full-time staff received the Meritorious Award of the Society of
Chiropodists' for services to chiropody, and another obtained a Diploma in Chiropodial Administrations
from the Salford Technical School of Chiropody.
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