To the Editor of Mental Welfare
Correspondence.
Dear Madam,
I do not wish even to appear to fail to appreciate the importance of Miss Gibson’s account of the Eagle House Hostel at Mitcham, but it is only fair to my Committee to put on record the fact that here we started Hostel treatment for defectives on Dr Bernstein s plan in September, 1923, some eight months before Eagle House was opened. The experiment is being tried at cne of our smaller branches situated some two miles from the main Institution. 1 can confirm Miss Gibson’s observations. One difficulty is to get factories to take the girls, another is to get places in daily service within reasonable distance of the Hostel. So far the additional liberty given to the girls has been justified. 1 hey shop go back- wards and forwards to work, and some of them to church and the cinema, by themselves.
We also find the Hostel useful in another way. Girls sent to ordinary domestic service, where they live in, are hit by the deadly monotony of the small house after Institution lite, and when they have time off and go out, there is no one to go out with or to talk to, and necessarily they pick up with some man. We now try, therefore, to get these 4 living in places, which are easier to find than daily situations, not too far from the Hostel. The girl?again after Dr Bernstein’s plan?can then make the Hostel her home headquarters, return to it when she is off duty for gossip, or to go to church or the cinema with another girl, and come to it for her annual holiday, etc. If you are so fortunate as to have a Seaside Branch as this Institution has, she can?and in our case does go for her holiday to the Seaside Branch. At the same time the head of the Hostel can keep a motherly interest in her, can see that she spends her wages wisely, and can hold her bank book.
One point is, I think, of the greatest importance. I feel that Dr Bernstein is right when he maintains that the correct place for the Hostel in the scheme of treatment for Defectives is ancillary to and attached to the large Institution, however many miles distant its actual situation may be. Then, in case of misbehaviour, and this does occur even ^ in Hostels, or in case of serious illness, the patient can be transferred to the main Institution at a minute’s notice for treatment or for further control before the experiment is again tried.
1 am, Yours faithfully, F. DOUGLAS TURNER, Medical Superintendent. Royal Eastern Counties Institution for the Mentally Defective, Colchester. 28th October, 1924.
[We ask Dr Turner to accept our apologies for the oversight to which he draws our attention, and l.ave great pleasure in placing his valuable experience before our readers.?Ed.J
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