Govt reviews care of severely disabled

Press, 9 May 1984, Page 9

Govt reviews care of severely disabled

The Government is reviewing the level of institutional care needed for the severely disabled, says the Minister of Social Welfare, Mr Young. “There will always be a need for some degree of institutional care for the severely disabled, but whether it needs to remain at the present level is another question,” Mr Young said in Christchurch yesterday. Templeton Hospital in Christchurch had a big psychopaedic service and ran substantial communitybased programmes, he said. Many parents of residents there did not want their children removed because of better opportunities there than in the community. “I certainly can sympathise with their wishes, particularly for those parents

whose ‘children’ are no longer young in years,” he said. “But I also appreciate that the costs incurred by running an institution like Templeton at a higher occupational level than is actually necessary are expensive and will mount each year.” A working party, with members from the Social Welfare Department, Health Department, the Treasury and the Society for the Intellectually Handicapped, was studying the issue. Its draft report would be available later this year and the Government would base its decision on that. Mr Young was speaking at the official opening of the I.H.C.’s new vocational resource centre in Ferry Road. He said the Government

had recently announced a 3 per cent increase in funding for the society, even though the Government’s spending on social services was not growing in real terms. The announcement showed that the Government recognised the value of the society’s work. The I.H.C. moved its workshop for intellectually handicapped adult trainees to Ferry Road last month, after it sold its Kilmarnock Street centre to the Canterbury Sheltered Workshops Association. About 100 trainees work at the new centre, and the society plans to lease another building on the western side of the city to house about 50 of them. The society hopes to help the long-term employment prospects of the trainees by. setting up the workshops in industrial districts.