[Report 1950] / Medical Officer of Health, Essex County Council.

  • Essex (England). County Council.
Date:
1950
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1950] / Medical Officer of Health, Essex County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    12/106 (page 12)
    One of the greatest problems facing the local health authority is their inability to secure admission to institutions of defectives requiring institutional care, owing tc shortage of hospital beds. At the end of the year over three hundred mental defectives1' were awaiting admission to institutions and in a large number of instances the home conditions or the condition and behaviour of the defective were such as to make admission to an institution a matter of urgency. The difficulties which face the*: Hospital Boards in the provision of beds are fully realised ; but the shortage has the effect of increasing to an almost impossible degree the problems of the local health authority in the provision of adequate community care for the mental defectives in their area. However frequent the supervision at home ; however great is the number ; of occupation centres provided, there is no alternative but an institution for the mental defective with filthy habits, ill behaviour or frequent epilepsy, particularly; t where the home is overcrowded and there are other children in the family. It is to be hoped that before long it will be possible to increase the number of places in institutional and thus relieve the severe burden on many households in the County. There are certain general considerations in connection with the application of the j Mental Deficiency Acts which merit consideration. In order to secure the admission] of a defective to an institution it is necessary to certify ” him and he is deprived of' his liberty, whether or not this is necessitated by his circumstances. Only a proportion' ; of defectives require control in this form for their own benefit or that of the community, I and the whole procedure of certification and of the means for the admission of defectives-j to institutions requires careful re-examination. Anomalies continually arise in con-t-l nection with the admission of defectives to institutions where, for example, it isA desirable that a defective should be admitted for a short period owing to domestic 1 difficulty at home, and he must either be placed under order or the law must be : stretched to secure his admission, under Section 15 of the Act, to an institution as a * place of safety. It would be an advantage to relax the requirements relating to certi- ■; fication prior to admission except where they are needed to secure power of removal i or detention in j ustifiable circumstances. It is, moreover, an unwarranted interference t with the liberty of the subject that in most cases a defective must be placed under & order to enable him to have institutional care or the benefits of guardianship. It is particularly desirable in the case of children that the stigma of certification i as mentally defective should be applied as sparingly as possible and the relationship i of the defective child, particularly the high grade feeble-minded defective, to the : educational system requires reconsideration. Power is now available under the a Education (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1948, for the cancellation of a report that a I child is incapable of receiving education at school owing to a disability of mind, and it is therefore possible to return a child being dealt with under the Mental Deficiency \ Acts to the educational system. This is an advantage but the whole process of reporting children to the authority under the Mental Deficiency Act, 1913, by means q of Section 57 of the Education Act, 1944, requires reconsideration, particularly where I the report is made on the grounds of inexpediency (Section 57 (4) ). The object of the Mental Deficiency Acts should be to ensure that all defective children who will benefit should be provided with education and instruction, and it is more than doubt- ful that the stigma of certification is necessary to achieve this end. It is anomalousq that a child suffering from a disability of mind as defined in the Education Act, 1944, l