[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Greenwich Borough].

  • Greenwich (London, England). Metropolitan Borough.
Date:
[1969?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: [Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Greenwich Borough]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    15/344 (page 11)
    11 mentally handicapped, which has been architect-designed, is nearing completion and should be in operation early next year. Combined centres at Federation Hall and Riverdale have now been opened and are a valuable addition to the Directorate's establishments. Problems of homelessness have been under continual review and the Housing Committee have helped the Welfare Committee enor mously in discharging their responsibility. Further improvements to temporary accommodation were undertaken and the importance of close social work support to vulnerable families has been recog nised by increasing the number of social workers allocated to this service. In this connection, the benefits of the multi-disciplinary area teams have now been amply demonstrated and experts in the various health and social services specialties have been deployed easily and without normal inter-departmental confusions and uncertainties. Notwithstanding the present comprehensiveness of the service, other methods of dealing with homelessness are being examined and, very shortly, the Council will be undertaking a long term review of the general position. A Working Party will be set up and it may be that their recommendations will be available for consideration next year. When we turn to the environmental services, mention must be made of the serious floods in September. The Directorate was heavily involved and the public health inspectors and the residential services staff in particular were fully employed in organising emergency services. The planned programmes for slum clearance and smoke control areas were fulfilled. The home nursing service was under heavy pressure but despite the increasing numbers of patients requiring nursing care, all demands were able to be met, although this is placing a strain on our nursing resources. New stringent legislation in regard to the registration of child minders has necessitated a review of our supervising arrangements. An important aspect of the work of the Social Services Directorate is the encouragement of staff to become fully qualified in their chosen speciality and the Council has authorised a con siderable programme of fulltime release or secondment of officers for training. The Directorate also has staff in-service training courses regularly organised for nurses, midwives, home helps, child helps and administrative staff. It is with regret that I announce the retirement towards the end of the year of Dr. T. Standring, the Associate Medical Officer of Health, and Mr. Frank A. Andrew, the Chief Public Health Inspector, both of whom left the Borough's service after distin guished careers. Dr. Standring, during his long tenure as Medical Officer of Health for Woolwich, was an acknowledged expert in