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health subjects were featured in the borough's
news sheet Progress and in the field of
publicity we continued to enjoy the cooperation
of Mr R C Skinner the Council's
Press and Information Officer
Home Safety
Mr Jones Home Safety Officer reports as
follows
The Home Safety Committee continued their
efforts over the past year to reduce the
number of accidents which occurred in and
around the home and particular subjects
covered included the misuse of fireworks
the door to door distribution of samples the
misuse of oil heaters and the new colour
coding of flexing electrical cords.
Continued support has also been given to
provide the assessment for the examinations
relating to the Guide Movement and to talks
to women s organisations on the question of
safety in the home.
The Hounslow Project
Work on the Hounslow Project begun in
summer 1965 by Eugene Heimler then Social
Work Organiser in the health department of
this borough was brought to a conclusion in
September 1970 This research project had
set out to develop and experiment with
predictive and preventive social work methods
for the speedier identification of those at
risk in the field of mental and emotional
illness An important part of the work was the
refining of a scale of social functioning
(HSSF) developed by Professor Heimler in
the Health Department of Middlesex County
Council when working with the long term
unemployed The HSSF asked questions
regarding satisfactions and frustrations in
five basic areas of life work finance.
family relationships friendships and personal/
sexual areas - the basic hypothesis being
that too little satisfaction and/or too much
frustration endangers people to a point where
they begin to drop out of society or can only
function with massive support from helping
agencies such as social workers family
members doctors clergy.
During the five years of the project's
existence many people from helping agencies
of all kinds in this country and abroad came
to investigate social functioning ideas Large
scale validation plans were drawn up with the
encouragement of the Ministry of Health but
the research grant offered did not materialise
Support therefore for this aspect of the
research was to be sought overseas and is now
forthcoming through the University of Calgary
and the Canadian Department of Immigration
& Manpower The methods pioneered in
Hounslow by Professor Heimler are being
integrated into the social work curriculum of
the dynamic new Social Work Training School
of the University of Calgary In the same
university in the Department of Education
Professor Philip Vernon world-renowned
validation expert is taking an active interest
in the scale and will be at hand to guide the
further validation plans At government level
the Canadian Department of Immigration &
Manpower will finance a nationwide survey
of the satisfaction/frustration levels of the
populations of all the provinces of Canada.
In USA both government and social service
agencies are training their workers in Social
Functioning methods and feeding research
material back to the University of Washington
Seattle.
Meantime in Hounslow basic experiments
with social functioning methods and ideas have
been continued by Louise Dighton and the
results shared in open seminars with interested
social workers from a number of borough
departments and service agencies.
In the mental health division where a great
deal of the work has been centred much
material has been gathered and patterns of
functioning of the well and the sick can now be
compared Further the scale has made it
possible to demonstrate diagramatically changes
resulting from therapeutic intervention.
In June 1970 a presentation of the work of
the project was made to Professor Caplan's
community care course at the Tavistock Clinic
Those attending were drawn from community
care services over the whole of Great Britain
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