View report page

MENTAL HEALTH & SOCIAL WORK
SERVICES
Introductory
The daily supervision of these services is delegated to a Senior
Medical Officer, who is assisted in the mental health aspects by a
Principal Mental Welfare Officer, and in the other social work aspects
by a Senior Social Worker.
Dr. Morris Markowe, Medical Administrator, Springfield Hospital
is the Consultant Psychiatrist to the Borough and I am grateful to
him for the following report on the Mental Health Service.
' It gives me great pleasure to present my first Annual Report
for 1970, and to acknowledge the help I have received from my distinguished
predecessor, Dr. R. K. Freudenberg, and from Dr. P. J.
Doody, Medical Officer of Health.
'This has been an exceptional year in the evolution of the Mental
Health Service in that while a decade has now passed since the
implementation of the Mental Health Act 1959, and the community
care facilities have expanded, a further landmark appeared in 1970
in the form of the Local Authority Social Services Act. We have held
numerous meetings to discuss how the Mental Health Service is likely
to develop and to be affected by its transfer from the Health Department
to the Social Services Department, and in these we have benefitted
by the collaboration of the newly appointed Director of Social
Services, Mr. W. Hutchinson, who has given his unstinted advice
and guidance.
'There are bound to be growing pains in any new organisation,
together with obvious difficulties in that the Social Services Department
has no regular Medical Officer, although we trust that Dr. M. J.
Freeman, our Senior Medical Officer with special responsibilities for
the Mental Health Service, will continue her day to day work in this
field as the medical expert available to the new Department. There
should certainly be little need to seek expert medical advice from
sources outside the Health Department in view of the wealth of
experience already developed there. Thus the danger of the overenthusiastic
social worker undertaking forms of psychotherapy without
medical guidance and control is a real one that we hope can be
avoided by our own close links with the Social Services Department
through formal discussion groups as well as informal consultations.
Liaison at all levels has been forged and developed, and close links
are being established through educational visits by the staffs of the
new Department to Springfield Hospital, as well as to Horton and
Netherne Hospitals. It must be emphasised that liaison and education
in Mental Health must inevitably be on a reciprocal basis between
the doctor, psychiatric nurse and social work personnel, and ranging
between the general practice, pyschiatric hospital and local authority
areas of the Health Service. Thus social workers are already attached
to a few group practices in the Borough, psychiatric nurses are beginning
to follow selected patients into the community, and some social
workers are playing their part as professional colleagues in the Consultant's
Psychiatric Team at the associated hospitals for the mentally
54