Report of the Working Party on Workshops for the Blind.

  • Great Britain. Working Party on Workshops for the Blind
Date:
1962
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Working Party on Workshops for the Blind. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    directly by local authorities. The amounts of augmentation payments, and the methods of determining them, continued to vary widely. 9. As a result of local authority and Government help, workshop accom- modation was expanded still further. By 1939 there were more than sixty work- shops in Great Britain, with about 4,500 blind workers. There were, however, interesting variations in different parts of the country. Scotland provided more workshop places, in proportion to the blind population, than did England; but they were concentrated in a few cities, to which, presumably, blind persons were expected to move their homes if necessary. In the North of England, by contrast, especially in Lancashire, almost every town had its own workshop. In other parts of England, workshops tended to be more widely scattered; but here, unlike Scotland, their facilities were supplemented by the organisation, often by the workshops themselves, of “chome-workers schemes’’. Under these schemes, blind people who had been trained in traditional trades but were out of reach of workshops, and also some engaged in other occupations such as plano-tuning and poultry keeping, were helped to set up in business in their own homes. They were provided with equipment, materials, advice and help in marketing; and their earnings were supplemented by payments from the local authorities. 10. As the workshops developed, the need was felt for closer co-operation and opportunities for workshop managers to discuss their common problems. These were the objects of the National Association of Workshops for the Blind (N.A.W.B.), which was established in 1929. It has always had a wide member- ship among both voluntary and municipal workshops, almost all of which are now members. It has remained a very active body up to the present day. 11. Although industrial processes outside the workshops were changing rapidly during these years, the work provided within them still largely consisted of the handcrafts recommended by the Departmental Committee in 1917. There were, however, a few experiments in other types of work, such as card- board box making, soap making, and the making of knitting needles. 12. In the period between the wars, there was some advance in the employ- ment of the blind in professional and commercial occupations, but these were suited only to a minority. Those seeking industrial work had virtually no avenue of employment except in the workshops and home-workers schemes. In these circumstances, the choice of blind persons for training and subsequent workshop employment was selective, since, except in the very few workshops offering employment in non-traditional trades, the workers were all expected to be capable of fully skilled craft work. The training of the blind, whether adults or young persons, in these skilled trades, remained the responsibility of local education authorities. It was carried out either in special training institutions or in the workshops themselves. In most trades, training lasted for four or five years and followed a standard syllabus. HISTORY SINCE 1939 CHANGES IN THE LEGAL, FINANCIAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE ARRANGEMENTS FOR THE WORKSHOPS 13. An Inter-Departmental Committee on the Rehabilitation and Resettle- ment of the Disabled was appointed in 1941, under the chairmanship of Mr. George Tomlinson (then Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour
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