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Psychiatric Rehabiitation
Association
During 1968, the second year of the P.R.A's existence in the Borough, the number of
patients referred increased by 50%. The group also changed its premises and is now installed
downstairs instead of upstairs at the Fillebrook Baptist Church Hall.
A holiday was arranged by the Superintendent for members and five people went to
St. Leonards, Sussex, for one week. This proved most successful and a similar venture is to
be undertaken in 1969.
The most significant change which took place during the year was the setting up of
the sheltered employment scheme by which members still in receipt of supplementary benefit
are gradually drawn into open industry. This scheme was started in November, originally
with three members; one worked only one week, one for two weeks and one continued working,
then becoming a full time employee of the local firm concerned. The scheme is still in the
pilot stage and it is hoped to encourage other local firms to participate.
"Play" Group for
the severely subnormal
There were relatively few changes during 1968 in the play groups which are run by the
Waltham Forest & District Society for Mentally Handicapped Children. The groups are still
held at Granleigh Road Clinic and Hurst Road Health Centre on two mornings each week. The
transport costs increased slightly. During the year there were more children referred suffering
from multiple handicaps.
Frequent visits were made to the play groups by health visitors, student health visitors,
trainees from our own training centres and day nurseries, together with staff from Claybury
Hospital.
They are staffed by volunteers and for one morning a week they look after severely
subnormal children who cannot attend our own centre because they are too young, too incapable
or in some other way more than our present facilities can cope with. It is a wonderful service
to the parents. It is also a service the local authority should provide and illustrates one of
the reasons why a new Junior Centre is being built to replace the existing one. Needless to
say, children who are too difficult for our centres are a more than usually heavy burden on
parents, and these are the very parents to whom the State refuses even the ordinary help that
other parents get.
CLINIC SERVICES
Dental Services
We began the year with a crisis in the School Dental Service due to a shortage of
dentists, and were driven to abandon the dental service entirely in most secondary schools in
order to concentrate on the more essential primary school children - leaving the others to go
to the N.H.S. dentists. However, the position gradually improved during the year and by the
end of the year we were gradually taking on the secondary schools again as circumstances
permitted until virtually the full service had been re-established.
Chiropody
The Chiropodists kept up their valuable service (the motto of their Society ".Post
Curam Otium" or roughly "Relief after treatment" means much more than that to many. It
may well mean mobility, the loss of which is the first step to isolation with all its problems).
Apart from work with the aged, where the chiropodists forms one of our team of staff,
school children can also be referred via their own doctor or the school medical service or their
parents, the appointments usually being made via the school secretary. The recent Schools
Careers Exhibition held last December was manned by Council staff in conjunction with the
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