Report of the Committee of Management and Medical Director : 1949 / Papworth Village Settlement.

  • Papworth Village Settlement (Cambridge, England)
Date:
1949
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Committee of Management and Medical Director : 1949 / Papworth Village Settlement. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    difficulties, is to give priority to the patient likely to respond to active treatment ; this attitude can be justi¬ fied by necessity but the conclusions often drawn that active treatment invariably produces immediate results that require convalescence only is not well founded on statistics or experi¬ ence. Still, Papworth must move with the times, and has modified the application of its principles without altering its belief in their ultimate truth. The Committee therefore approached the East Anglian Regional Board with a proposition that patients from other Sanatoria, who had already had bed treatment, and may have commenced active treatment such as pneumothorax, should be transferred to Papworth. They would be admitted as patients on a month’s probation, thereby safeguarding the Regional Board against the admission of probable relapse-cases, and giving Papworth time to apply for their enrolment under the Ministry of Labour’s Scheme of allowances agreed under the provi¬ sions of the Disabled Person’s Employ¬ ment Act. The Scheme has the pos¬ sibility of freeing active-treatment beds in other Sanatoria, and of giving the patients who qualify for them the benefits of personal and family allow¬ ances during that time when they are fit for training but still unfit for a return to their previous conditions of home and employment in normal industry. Those who are sufficiently recovered, or who elect to return home when fit for a five-hour day, can have residential observation and treatment for a time equivalent to that spent in the usual Sanatorium not equipped with workshops ; those who are considered “middle cases’’ with a “fifty-fifty” chance of survival and useful employment in sheltered industry can have the advantages of our usual Scheme if their Local Authorities are willing to enrol them on our category of Colonists and to bear the cost of our steadily reducing charges over a period of a further four years. This in brief outline is Papworth’s suggestion of a modification of its former uninterrupted and “combined treatment and rehabilitation”, and we have every reason to hope that it will appeal to Regional Boards, meet with Ministry of Health approval, and establish a regime that may be applied with advantage to other Village Settle¬ ments. We believe it can do more ; it could be the basis for what we consider the proper use ofthe Remploy Factory, because it opens the way for the “middle case’’, who decides against residence in our Village, to enter his local factory at a stage when he is nearing the point at which he can become self-supporting although still requiring the After-Care he can receive from his Chest Physician under the powers of his Local Authority. GENERAL REHABILITATION STATISTICS 1949 Men Women Total (a) Average No. of Beds occupied by Rehabilita- tion patients. 205 89 294 (b) No. of unoccupied beds ... ... ... 36 18 54 (c\ No. of Admissions 54 33 87 (d) No. of Discharges 79 38 1 17 I. To hospital for treatment 42 2. Home. ... 64 3. To Village . I I (e) Total number benefited ... 381 Progress of Rehabilitation In Hospital and Rehahilit- Industries ation No. of patients and trainees Depts. commencing work during year 20 70 No. of patients and trainees colonized during year ... No. of Colonists allocated 19 25 houses .. — 14 [61