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Neither of the boys who have taken up the Training in
Shoemaking under the auspices of the Shaftesbury Society have
obtained work. Both our own and the Shaftesbury's Centres in
Shoemaking and Repairing are rather "behind times" now. We
both need the addition of electrical lathes, brushes and machines
to fit the boys with knowledge, for readiness for the modern
Shoemaking Firms.
The girls generally take up Factory or Domestic work. A
few physically defective girls follow up their needlework trends,
and a few mentally defective girls and boys have found their
bents in restaurant work—starting in the kitchen in most cases.
Three of the four physically defectives who have seriously
taken up clerking in the recent years are in employment and
doing well.
Many of the ineducable cases of the Mentally Defective
Department are in urgent need of Institutional Care, or even of
"Occupational Centres" if only "Funds" permitted. A travelling
teacher to their homes regularly might help considerably with
these cases.
Despite these rather depressing comments, these defective
children greatly benefit by the Special School life here; for they
improve physically, educationally, mentally and socially by the
very contact with one another and the happy atmosphere, so
therefore, they are more fit to take a place in the world as they
grow older, and become worthy citizens, as the visits of many of
our old pupils prove to us.