Further reports about the Levin mental hospital

Constructive reforms put forward

by John Roberts

There is really only one point where I can agree with the article in the last issue of Salient on the Levin Hospital, and that is the lack of trained staff.

This is a real setback in programmes aimed at the development of patients.

The article mentions a close relationship existing between the staff and patients. This certainly does not exist in the nursing sphere, where nurses work on a rotation system serving a period of two months or less, and sometimes as little as one or two days on a particular villa.

This gives little chance to form a close relationship with the patients.

The World Health Organisation has pointed to the need for mentally retarded children in institutions to form a continuous attachment to a single adult—there is little chance for such a relationship to be formed at Levin.

Nursing turnover is also a cause for considerable concern. Some 167 persons commenced training in psychopaedic nursing at Levin between January, 1963, and August, 1966: of this number 9 per cent had completed their training at the end of the period.

This means that of the 90 (approximately) female nurses at Levin at the moment, less than a dozen are fully trained, and this for over 700 patients.

It is also worthy of note that nurses at Levin are expected to carry out domestic tasks such as cleaning, for no domestic staff are employed— a situation in sharp contrast to that in the general hospitals of the country.

There is a lack of many staff in the hospital—doctors, social workers and psychologists.

The article infers that the patients are of low grade intelligence. This may not be due so much to the endowment of the patients, but to the fact that the institution does little to develop what intellectual potential they may have.

Any insufficiency of intelligence is just as likely to reflect on the institution as it is on the patients' potential. All, apart from the severely retarded (and even them in some cases), are capable of some development.

Programmes for the patients are in many cases inadequate. Except for the 60 pupils who attend the Kimberley Special School, education and training programmes are not related to any psychological diagnosis of the patients.

The hospital has only a part time psychologist, who visits twice a month. In the programmes offered there is little follow up, either as to the progress of patients, or the effectiveness of the methods used.

The hospital's programme offers little in the way of rehabituation. It does little to develop or keep a close contact between the patient and his parents—essential for re-habilitation.

Most of the programmes are aimed at custodial care and the supporting of the institution rather than rehabilitation.

The article claims the hospital should be larger. The large waiting list points to the need to completely scrap the hospital.

Hospitals should not be the most important aspect of a system caring for and training the mentally retarded. In a properly balanced service, the hospitals play only a subsidiary and peripheral part.

It has been stated that the modern residential institution "must not be too large, it must be well integrated into the community, and its other social and medical services, it must have a considerable turnover rate, with short term admissions as well as long term ones, and the aims of training and rehabilitation must be pursued in it as rigorously as in the educational programmes outside."

Levin hospital offers little in any of these respects.

Planning and practices for the retarded in this country have for too long ignored developments overseas.

Our services are inadequate and outdated.