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Heolth Social Worker and the Warden; admissions and discharge decisions
are made jointly. We find the usual difficulty in getting referrals of
suitable patients in adequate numbers, but think that they are to be
found in acute admission wards, psychiatric out-patients and general
practice, where we are building up contacts. The "ethos" of the Hostel
is one of reasonable tolerance and understanding by staff of residents'
problems, coupled with maximum encouragement of their adult capabilities
and responsibilities.
Sheltered
Accommodation
The project for re-settling long-standing psychiatric patients from
local hospitals into Local Authority Sheltered Accommodation is well
under way. Several are now living in warden-supervised flatlets, run by
our Housing Department; a council house, being adapted as a group-home
for four patients will be ready shortly. These schemes are self-supporting,
since patients pay rent either out of earnings or from M.S.S. allowances.
It appears that there is a fair supply of patients with personalities
able to sustain a reasonably independent life in such sheltered
conditions, with minimum supervision. Such provision would thus appear
to be an economic and humane way of dealing with quite a proportion of
our future chronic psychotic population. A plentiful supply of varied
housing, and flexible housing policies, must have very high priority in
helping to solve our social and medical welfare problems.
Care of
Sub-Normals
The same would apply, of course, to the future care of subnormalsj
of all categories. The distance, let along the overcrowding, of our catchment
area Subnormality Hospital at Colchester remains a distressing
fact of life. The hospital is being most helpful in difficult circumstances,
and plans to offer us local out-patient facilities next year: a very desirable
service. We are moving as fast as we can, taking into account the
shortage of all resources, to get our hostel programme off the ground.
We hope to have the first one open in 1970/71 and another one possibly
soon after.
We would greatly welcome a small Day-Hqspital of say 30-40 beds,
possibly to be shared with a neighbouring Borough, in our vicinity. This
should offer day-care on week-days, as well as longer periods of
temporary care, to the whole range of subnormality problems of all ages.
We wonder if a unit, suitable for adaptation, may not exist in one of the
local hospitals, or could not be added to it.