View report page

Our first trainee was seconded to Enfield College of Technology on the first course to
be started in the Country, for training for the Diploma in Residential Social Work. Now the
future staffing of homes no longer has the picture of desperation with which we started 1969
and future difficulties should be easier to overcome.
Hostel for the
Subnormal
The new hostel, eventually named Sylvan Lodge after some discussion was brought
gradually into action during the year. Mrs.Bridgeland, who started as Matron in the summer,
has proved a most valuable person to launch this scheme which is a new field for the Council
to enter, and one in which the officers had little experience. The support of the Waltham Forest
Society for Mentally Handicapped Children has been invaluable and the ways in which they,
and Mr. Bridgeland, have rallied round have seen us through a number of difficult times.
We have learnt much, not least that staffing is our weakest point, for with one small
hostel we have no reserve to cope with staff sickness or leave. The second hostel in our
capital programme, badly needed for its own sake, should help our resilience here.
Temporary
Accommodation
During the year Cecil House opened for homeless families and we were able gradually
to withdraw from the other accommodation - 1031 Forest Road and Suttons Hostel - which had
been in use temporarily. Woodlands and Cecil House are now the only buildings in use for this
purpose.
It is worth re-stating the obvious since the complicated stories of ineptitude and
irresponsibility, appropriate to most of these families, distract attention from it, namely that
what a homeless family needs is a home! The only complete alternative is to break up the
family. Only very rarely is this the right course on either humane or economic grounds.
Faced with these problems the officers of this department must express great appreciation
of the help of the Housing Department in finding housing for those families for whom this could
be recommended. The persistent pressure upon us is not going to get any less and our gratitude
to the Housing Department does not imply that we shall pester them any less in future!
Cecil House is a very great improvement on anything we have had so far, with a
resident warden and with families having sufficient rooms to live with reasonable dignity and
some degree of privacy. Nevertheless, the families there live for the day when they can get a
home of the ir own.
Intensive social work is the key to rehabilitation and one wishes resources allowed of
more adequate provision. Frustrations and discouragements in social work with these families
frequently lead one to wonder if we are making any headway, but standing back and reviewing
what has happened over the last three or four years to each family that has been admitted
brings to light a general picture of successof which our social workers can be very proud.
Day Nurseries
DAY CENTRES
During the year new charges and assessment scales on a numberof services were applied
but it was on day nurseries that a public furore arose led by a group of mothers who, if they had
enquired, would have discovered that they gained rather than lost by application of the new
scales. In fact, most mothers did benefit, but one or two hard cases did arise, and the Chairman's
powers of discretion were needed on more than one occasion.
The cuts in expenditure during the year brought such close scrutiny of the financing of
the day nurseries, and the calculating of unit costs was in danger of becoming so academic an
- 10 -