§ Mr. Alfred Morrisasked the Secretary of State for Social Services how many hospitals which accept severely subnormal children have no speech therapist, no social worker or no physiotherapist, respectively; if he will name the hospitals concerned; what action he is taking to improve the position; and if he will make a statement.
§ Sir K. JosephReturns show that on 31st December 1972 there were 102 hospitals and units which had at least one subnormal or severely subnormal patient under the age of 16. Sixty-one of these had on their staff no speech therapist, 55 no social worker and 36 no physiotherapist. It has not been possible to ascertain from central records the extent to which services of these professions are made available from other hospital or local authority sources. For this reason I do not consider it appropriate to list the names of the individual hospitals and small units referred to above.
"Better Services for the Mentally Handicapped"(Cmnd. 4683) stressed the importance of the services of staff in these professions and reports from regional hospital boards indicate that some increases have been achieved in the past three years but that there are local recruitment difficulties in some areas. The hon. Member will be aware that the Government have accepted the recommendations of the Quirk Report on the future unification under health authorities of the provision of speech therapy services and that the other recommendations of the report are being considered by the Departments concerned. The Government have also decided that social work support for the hospital service shall be provided in future by local authority social services departments and 162W a working party is being set up to consider the way in which this can be best achieved. I myself am keen that we should consider the problems of physiotherapists in the light of the views of the small working group which I have asked to report on the future role of the remedial professions.