View report page

The meeting is a social gathering with occasional talks and more usually enter
tainment. A Christmas dinner a Spring Buffet Supper and a Summer Excursion
to the sea are arranged. Members may go away for holidays at reduced prices to
two caravans at Lancing, Sussex provided by public subscription from the citizens
of Brentford and Chiswick and maintained by Middlesex Association for the Blind.
The British Wireless for the Blind Fund supplies wireless sets to registered
blind persons through the County Council which maintains all sets for blind and
partially-sighted persons.
Other services provided directly by the County Council or through a Registered
agency, include facilities for the placement of blind persons in employment,
courses of residential rehabilitation,, training courses for mothers with
blind babies, the supply of embossed literature, special equipment and handcraft
materials, assistance in the disposal of handcrafts and assisted holidays for
those in need.
WELFARE OF HANDICAPPED PERSONS OTHER THAN BLIND
Schemes for the welfare of handicapped persons other than blind and partially
sighted are operated by the County Council's Welfare Department under the
National Assistance Act, 1948; these cover the deaf and dumb and hard of hearing,
and other persons who are substantially and permanently handicapped by
crippling diseases or congenital deformity.
The County Council's Welfare Department has provided two Welfare Visitors
for persons in the Borough who are suffering from substantial and permanent
handicaps other than those already mentioned and they work under the direction
of the Area Welfare Officer. They visit such persons in their own homes with
a view to assisting them to obtain from statutory or voluntary sources (or both)
facilities, appliances, etc., which may benefit them The help afforded may for
example enable the disabled person to take part in social activities choral
classes, dancing classes, attend handcraft classes , obtain a needed holiday, or
by provision of ramps for mechanical chairs, handrails, lifting hoists and the
like, give a previously non-existent measure of mobility to a person who was
chair-bound or house-bound. Where the circumstances require it, adaptations to
houses, including the provision of downstairs toilet facilities, may be undertaken.
During i960, special adaptations were made to eight houses in the Borough
tenanted by handicapped or elderly persons. Details of the work done are as
follows:-
Case Work done
1 Handrails on stairs and landing.
2 Handrails at front door and rail on steps in garden. Rail unit on toilet.
Handrail on wall above bath,
3 Toilet rail unit. Securing Penryn Hoist to wall. Concrete ramp at front
door to enable independent exit to sit in garden. Lowering of sink and
drainboard to fit height of special gas stove installed to enable use
from wheelchair.
4 Ground floor accommodation provided and ramp and rails fitted at back
door.
5 Ground floor accommodation provided and handrails put up above bath and
on wall by toilet.
6 Outside toilet made accessible from kitchen with lobby from new kitchen
door to toilet. Chimney breast in kitchen removed to make more space
and window put in where old kitchen door had been for more light. Small
geyser supplied,
7 Building of studio in back yard to enable him to have Art training with
possibility of future employment as being without arms he uses his feet
to paint.
8 Handrails fixed on stairs and above bath.
-39-