Annual report of the General Board of Control for Scotland : 1927-1937.

Date:
1937
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Annual report of the General Board of Control for Scotland : 1927-1937. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    1030/1038 (page 46)
    Authorities. In view, however, of the outbreak of war in August 1914, and the consequent falling into abeyance for the time being of those provisions of the Statute relative to the establishment of Certified Institutions by Local Authorities, the Board decided that for a time the Institutions at Larbert and Baldovan should be regarded as National Institutions in the widest sense of the term, receiving cases without preference from all over Scotland, and accordingly no contracts were allowed to be entered into between the Directors of these Institutions and any of the Local Authorities. It is now 23 years since the Mental Deficiency and Lunacy (Scotland) Act came into operation and over 18 years since the termination of the Great War, and the Board consider that the time has now arrived when each Local Authority should be required to comply strictly with the Statute by making institutional provision for its mental defectives : (1) by the establishment of an institution either alone or in combina¬ tion with other Local Authorities, or (2) by contracting with the Managers of an existing Certified Institu¬ tion. If your Authority has not already made provision in one or other of these ways, I am to request that you will be good enough to bring this circular letter before them, and furnish the Board as soon as possible with an indication of their proposals in connection with the matter. It may be that the authorities of an institution in which you have mental defectives boarded at present may be prepared to enter into a contract with your Authority for the reception of a specified number of defectives. In any case, it is the intention of the Board that, in future, not more than four defectives shall be received into, or maintained in, an institution not belonging to a Local Authority except by specific contract between that Authority and the Institution Directors. I am, Sir, Your obedient servant, J. A. W. Stone, Secretary. CIRCULAR ISSUED TO LOCAL AUTHORITIES EMBRACED IN THE EAST CENTRAL AREA REGARDING PROVISION OF INSTITU¬ TIONAL ACCOMMODATION FOR MENTAL DEFECTIVES. General Board of Control for Scotland, Edinburgh, 14^ January 1938. Sir, I am directed to refer to the Board’s circular letter No. 236, dated 20th May 1937, and to say that they have had under consideration the position as it affects those Local Authorities within the combination which