§ Mr. Carter-Jones asked the Secretary of State for Social Services, in view of the Green Paper "Care in the Community" and the December 1980 document "Mental Handicap—Priorities, Progress and Problems", if he will set a specific date by which all area health authorities will have moved all children and adolescents presently living in long-stay mental handicap hospitals into community-based accommodation; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg:Hospitals have already very largely stopped admitting mentally handicapped children other than for short-term care and the numbers remaining are small. It would be inappropriate and impractical, particularly at a time of restraints on public expenditure, for my right hon. Friend to impose a target date for authorities to make alternative provision when the needs of the children and local circumstances vary so widely. If such a deadline were set, some authorities might be obliged, in order to meet it, to transfer some of the remaining children to less suitable forms of alternative care.