MENTAL DEFECTIVES

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 680, 4 June 1929, Page 10

MENTAL DEFECTIVES

BOARD TO START OPERATIONS CLINIC AT WELLINGTON (From Our Resident Reporter) WELLINGTON, Monday. Operations of the Mental Defectives Board, under the powers conferred by the legislation of last year, are about to commence. Dr. T. Gray, Inspector-General of Mental Hospitals, and chairman of the board, stated today that it had been decided to take advantage of the authority conferred on the board by the Act and to start clinics in various parts of the country. The first clinic is being established in Wellington, in tho premises occupied by the board. Recently there was advertised the position of social service worker attached to this clinic, and a selection has been made frf n a large number of applicants, and the name of this appointee will bo announced shortly. The existence of the clinic is becoming known, and already there are cases being referred to it by the medical profession, the children’s courts, and the Education Department. As yet it is not intended to establish clinics in other parts of the Dominion, though it is recognised that ultimately there will have to be at least one such clinic for every province. The intention is to run the Wellington establishment under the eyes of the board, to profit by experience there before establishing other such centres for dealing with children, and to ensure uniformity when the move for other such institutions is made.

In addition, states Dr. Gray, the board has approved the creation of the first residential farm for the education of defective children. This will be situated at Templeton, near Christchurch, where an institution of a. kindred department has been taken over. The farm will be upon the villa principle; one building is already erected and another will be constructed. When this is completed it will ber possible to accommodate 48 children in each one. Here children who are likely to benefit by training in outdoor pursuits will receive tuition. There will be no nurses, but a matron will be appointed, and with her will be associatel a teaching staff of girls, who will be entrusted with the work of fitting the young to take their place in some rank of society. As the estate is one of 310 acres, there is ample room for expansion. In addition to providing for immediate requirements in the manner mentioned, the board is collecting statistical data which will aid it in drawing up a programme for expansion of its activities in dealing with the feebleminded of the country. One important result at which it aims is the separation of the congenitally mental defective from the acute or chronically insane, now accommodated in mental hospitals. Not only will this separation benefit the feeble-minded, but it is expected to have far-reaching effects in improving the classification now possible in the mental hospitals themselves. Until the clinics are operating in the various parts of the country, there can bo no move for the compilation of the register of feeble-minded which was one of the points of the Act which met with debate. In point of fact, the board is not anxious to push ahead with the register, but it is recognised that ultimately this will be necessary, not alone iin order that it may be known what children need treatment, but that the measure of success attending the operations of the board’s institutions may be gauged.