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TRANSPORT
Clubs
Voluntary organisations run social clubs for the elderly, the blind, the deaf and the
physically handicapped, and voluntary helpers who are responsible for them are dedicated
people. Meetings are held at various times ranging from several times a week to once a
fortnight. Transport, or lack of it, again rears its head. There is not sufficient to take all
those requiring to attend these meetings. The club organisers arrange various activities
including whist drives, bingo, concert parties and outings. They arrange to visit their
members who are sick and keep in touch with those who cannot attend often.
The cost of all this, for transport is a costly business, is beyond the means of most
voluntary organisations and it is natural that the local authority should be approached expectantly
for help. It is then seen that the local authority is having its own problems. It is
desirable that more physically handicapped people should go to Roberts Hall, more meals-onwheels
be delivered, old people brought to centres for food, fellowship and attention.
Those that are least mobile are most deprived of the very things that a caring
community would like to make available, by far the most important being human company.
That Health and Welfare presents a sizeable bill for its mobility is undoubted. Nevertheless
progress implies that this factor of all must grow if the service is to keep pace with public
expectations.
FIELD WORK
Public Health
Inspectorate
Much of the work of the Public Health Inspectorate is accomplished by persuasive
informal measures rather than by punitive powers. Broadly the function of a Public Health
Inspector is to secure compliance on the part of the public with an ever increasing number
of Acts, Orders and Regulations designed to protect the health, welfare and safety of the
community. I say to "secure compliance" rather than to "enforce" because whilst enforcement
by process of law is the ultimate remedy, compliance is in fact increasingly secured
by advice, persuasion and education.
The Inspector has also unrivalled opportunities for effective health education by
demonstrating on the spot how the principles and practices of environmental hygiene should
be observed and pointing out faulty habits and practices as they occur.
Food and Drugs - In a highly organised industrial society the preparation, processing
and distribution of food become increasingly complicated. The Public Health Inspectorate
is concerned with the problems of the fitness of food for human consumption; chemical,
bacteriological and organoleptic quality; production and processing methods, packaging and
food storage techniques, construction and equipment of food premises and trading methods,
including distribution, display and stock rotation problems.
Housing: Multiple Occupation --The objects of a survey undertaken during the year
was to obtain a broad assessment of the problems of multiple occupation of houses in the
borough and the extent to which immigrants from the Commonwealth are involved. Separate
records of the time spent by staff visiting immigrants were kept in order to assess the degree
to which differences of language and customs in any particular situation affected the service
and to enable the Council to give consideration to the question of claiming grant under
Section II of the Local Government Act, 1966 in accordance with the provisions of Home
Office Circular No. 15/1967.
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