Volume 2

Report of the Committee of Enquiry into Mental Handicap Nursing and Care.

  • Great Britain. Committee of Enquiry into Mental Handicap Nursing and Care.
Date:
1979
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: Report of the Committee of Enquiry into Mental Handicap Nursing and Care. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    16/254
    in a third of the wards and a fifth of the hostels; the ward or hostel staff usually being involved in carrying out the programmes. 15. The question of whether the nursing and care staff spend too much time on domestic and administrative work is discussed. Only a few of the staff expressed dissatisfaction with the domestic side of their work but a third of the more senior ward and hostel staff were dissatisfied with their administrative work. Chapter 5 The way the wards and hostels were run 16. In general fewer restrictions or routines were adopted in the hostels than in the hospitals but there were only minor differences between the adult hostels and the high ability wards. There appeared to be some scope for allowing the residents to live more independently in some of the hostels and wards in each ability group and particularly within a few wards which seemed to be run on traditional institutional lines. 17. There was slightly more stability in the staffing of the hostels than of the wards in that, for example, 80% of the officers in charge of hostels compared with 70% of the ward sisters or charge nurses had worked in their unit for a year or longer. 18. Half of the nurses, but hardly any of the hostel staff, were obliged to wear uniforms. The wards in which the nurses wore uniforms tended to be run in a more institutional way than the other wards. 19. The arrangements for and frequency of contacts with relatives and voluntary workers were similar in the hospitals and hostels. During the previous week almost a fifth of the residents had been visited by relatives and voluntary workers had assisted in activities with the residents in about half of the units. Chapter 6 Contact with staff in other professions and influence over decisions on individual residents 20. Most, but not all, of the more senior ward and hostel staff had frequent discussions with staff from their residents’ occupational centres or with the school teachers. However, about half of the more junior staff had never taken part in this type of discussion. 21. The vast majority of the ward sisters/charge nurses, but only half of the officers in charge, had discussed the progress of at least one of their residents with a consultant for the mentally handicapped within the last six months. Conversely almost all of the officers in charge, but only two-thirds of the ward sisters/charge nurses had had this type of discussion with a social worker within the same period. 22. Just over a third of the ward sisters and a fifth of the officers in charge said that case conferences were never held on their residents. Within the hospitals this seemed to be linked to many of the ward sisters and nursing officers feeling that their views were not fully taken into account in making decisions concerning their patients, for example with respect to admitting new patients or transferring them: The ward sisters who were rarely involved in making these decisions tended to have more limited objectives for their patients and to have a more pessimistic view of the scope for developing the potential abilities of the mentally handicapped.