Volume 1

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.

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    CHAIRMAN’S PREFACE TO: The Rt Hon David Ennals, MP Secretary of State for Social Services The Rt Hon Bruce Millan, MP Secretary of State for Scotland The Rt Hon John Morris, QC, MP Secretary of State For Wales Dear Secretaries of State On behalf of the Committee of Enquiry into Mental Handicap Nursing and Care I have the honour of submitting our report to you. We have seen our appointment and the ensuing 3 years’ work as a logical and inevitable refiection of mounting public concern about the quality of life being experienced by mentally handicapped adults and children in residential care. A major aspect of this concern has been the conditions in which some mental handicap nursing staff are working. Our Committee was established following the recommendations in the report of the Briggs Committee on Nursing in which the whole question was raised of the logic of having two separate forms of staff training and recruitment to meet the needs of mentally handicapped people in hospital or local authority care. Our terms of reference did not allow us to consider the structure of residential services, or to make recommendations about who should provide them, but we did interpret our remit as covering consideration of the conditions in which our newly trained staff would work. We have built up our recom- mendations on the actual needs of mentally handicapped people and the staff who care for them. These we have reached through our questionnaire to all staff organisations; through a survey conducted by the OPCS for our Com- mittee; through oral evidence and finally through the visits and work experi- ence of our widely based membership. We are convinced that change is not only necessary but inevitable; in addition to the Briggs proposals there is the 1971 White Paper which set the trend for development of locally based services for mentally handicapped people. We recognise that a doubling of the workforce will cost money. The acute need for additional finance will not be in the NHS sector but rather for local authorities where the setting up of a specific fund to launch the new training scheme will be crucial. We were given a challenging task which was enormously eased by the quality of the members of the Committee all of whom have served in their personal capacity and not as representatives of organisations. I express my gratitude to them. Despite heavy professional commitments of their own they have given generously of their time in attendance and travelling. The wide base of the Committee membership has enabled us to draw on current work experience at many levels of the health and local authority services. It is noteworthy that with their widely disparate backgrounds members have found themselves in broad agreement not only on the need for change but on the direction of change. 1V