[Report 1970-1971] / Medical Officer of Health, Berkshire County Council.

  • Berkshire (England). County Council.
Date:
1971
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1970-1971] / Medical Officer of Health, Berkshire County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Whilst Local Government reorganisation proceeded to the stages of a Bill, the N.H.S. had to mark time with a further consultative docu- ment. Like the second Green Paper of the previous Government, it accepted the main principle of integration outside Local Government - as well as the consequential need to ensure co-terminous boundaries. The main differences were that it added a Regional Health Authority as a tier directly between the Area Health Authority and Department of Health and Social Services, and replaced district committees with community health councils outside the management structure as the means for public participation. The Secretary of State set in motion two further studies, one to determine the best means of achieving collaboration between the new A.H.A.’s and Local Government, and the second dealing with the management structure of the new health authorities. The Department’s Management Study Team were anxious to test certain of their hypo- theses in a few of the proposed new areas, and the Area 39 Health Services Co-ordinating Committee was delighted to accept an invitation to become one of the “test” areas during the first half of 1972. We now await a White Paper and we know that a Bill cannot be introduced until the Parliamentary session starting in late 1972. It was in 1967 that the then Minister of Health first announced that he was setting in train an examination of the new administrative structure of the medical and related services for which he was responsible. It will obviously be well into 1972, perhaps early 1973, before we have any clear idea of the future pattern and this prolonged uncertainty has led to much understandable though unfortunate anxiety amongst those members of the staff who are most likely to be affected. Education of Mentally Handicapped Children One of the outstanding achievements of the Health Committee in the past few years has been development in this held, not only of much needed modern buildings but more importantly our approach to the needs of these children. The Health Committee has seen mental handi- cap as basically another type of handicap for which children need special educational help. We abandoned long ago the formal ascertainment of these children as “ineducable” (or later “unsuitable for education in school”) and substituted for this an informal procedure where we advised parents that we could offer more appropriate help in the type of school being provided by the Health Committee. If these children need education suited to their aptitudes and abilities the primary need is for appropriately skilled teachers. The Committee has now seen the fruits of its training programme since with one exception the teachers all hold the Diploma of the Training Council for Teachers of the Mentally Handicapped - or in case of some of the