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These meetings were very successful and will continue during 1970 when other
Departments will have the opportunity of explaining their work.
The result of the Co-ordinating Committee's report to the Council and its
recommendation to improve services to tenants in the Kingsmead area reached
fruition during 1969. in November, two flats at 5 and 6 Templemead House were
converted into a social service centre and two administrative officers were
appointed. A provisional rota of services was drawn up and meetings were held
amongst Council officers and with representatives of voluntary organisations
and the tenants association to draw up a programme. This has provided a
unique opportunity for co-operation between statutory and voluntary organisations
and it was hoped that the centre would meet the needs not only of the
Kingsmead Estate but also the surrounding area. It was felt that plans for
the Kingsmead area would need to start quietly and gradually build up and
services increase as local needs became apparent. The centre started with
great goodwill from all parties involved and even at this early stage multidisciplinary
co-operation and co-ordination is showing positive results.
MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES
Although the mental health service in Hackney might be considered to be
good, there is no cause for complacency but a need to be vigilant about future
development. An analysis of the mental health activities throughout the
country has revealed that a more modern approach to the subject had taken
place in several forward-looking authorities over the past few years and ideas
will now have to be introduced in Hackney in order to keep abreast with the
current philosophy of mental health community care and activities for the
mentally handicapped. Some of these problems have been dealt with already
as indicated in the different sections below and it is envisaged that the
improvements will continue.
Staff
Following the Mental Health Act, 1959, the London County Council
established a mental health service on a divisional basis and at the reorganisation
of London in 1965 the London boroughs took over the mental health
social workers who covered the areas of the new administrative units. Since
then the number of patients discharged from the hospitals for community care
has increased considerably causing the caseloads of the individual social
workers to increase to numbers that could not be adequately dealt with from
the point of view of community care. In fact the services given by the
mental health section were becoming really more of an efficient emergency
service rather than a full service. To enable a proper community care to be
introduced, the Council agreed to increase the establishment of mental health
social workers from 12 to 20.
At the beginning of the year no mental health social worker had any of
the academic qualifications recommended for social workers. However, during
the year one older experienced mental health social worker was accepted in a
newly established one year course for this type of social worker. During the
year the Committee agreed that the department should send two mental health
social workers each year on the appropriate courses to receive training.
Case loads
At the beginning of the year the caseload of the mental health section was
1,031, 453 psychiatric patients and 578 mentally handicapped. The referrals
of patients to Community Care continued to increase during the year; 687 were
referred compared with 361 for the previous year. Many of the cases referred
were either considered not to need active care or would not accept it. The
total known caseload is now 1,272 but it may be that some no longer require