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8
cannot be fully effective until the social service department and the housing,
education and health departments are the undivided responsibility of the same
local authority". In addition they will remove most of the mental health activities
from the health to the social services department. When the Royal Commission
reports it may well make recommendations on the health and social services that
will differ from both the Green Paper and Seebohm.
Much of the Maud Report can be Implemented Immediately and the L.B.M.S.U.
report is so designed as not to await further legislation. Seebohm will require
some legislation, and the report suggests an appointed day about a year later.
Changes required by the Green Paper and the Royal Commission may be of such
a fundamental nature that It can hardly be expected that the necessary blll» cm
be promoted in the life of the present parliament.
Seebohm is basically concerned with the activities of one profession,
social workers; the Green Paper with the activities of the medical profession
and its many associated professions; Maud, the L.B.M.S.U., and the Royal
Commission are fundamental exercises in the well-being of local government is t
whole.
Twenty Years On
In 1946, there appeared the "Report of the Care of Children Committee"
(Curtis). The nation was disturbed at tragic stories of deprived and neglected
children. The answer was of course an "ad hoc" solution, the Children's Committee,
Department and Officer, separated from the rest of the Council's
activities, a solution much criticized by the then chief officers (who were siid
to be "protecting their empires"). Twenty years later we are still disturbed with
tragic stories of deprived and neglected children, with the modern addition of
the "battered baby syndrome". Seebohm would now reverse all this structure.
Also, twenty years ago the National Health Service Act came into operation.
Against the wishes of many doctors and authorities (who were, of course, "pro*
tecting their empires") public health doctors and general practitioners were
separated from the hospital service in an "ad hoc" solution. Now the Green
Paper suggests a reversal of this structure.
In twenty years' time, will the Seebohm solution, which is as divisive as It
is integrative, if it is fully Implemented, be subject to a similar reversal?
Seebohm hints that this may be so — "We must not be understood as wishing to
dismiss for all time the idea of some possible future union of all the social
services at local level. However, such a union must, in our view, also include
some of those medical services which are at present outside local authority
health services; education services and perhaps housing as well. We realise
that such major reorganisation could only be a long-term Ideal" (Page 42, para
136). (Critics of Seebohm, once again, will be said to be "protecting their
empires").