Meet the Local Associations
9:
District
Ealing
keynote of the four-year-old Ealing Association for Mental Health is friendship. Members are truly the friends of patients and their relatives, and friendship binds the of members the association and extends into the community through many social and educational activities. Twice every week a coach is hired to take members of the Association and patients' relatives to Springfield Hospital. While relatives visit, five to eight members of the Association escort parties of 15 to 30 patients who have been carefully selected by the nursing staff, back to the coach for an alternate On afternoon's outing. weeks in the summer months, the party may go for a drive in Richmond Park. Special permission has been given for the coach to drive through the Royal park and when the weather
THE
On alternate weeks and during
^
winter, shopping expeditions in are greatly enjoyed and the esc?l then treat the patients to tea in a cr.. Always the waitresses are except1^, ally attentive and kind, and someti^, public interest is aroused. When ^ lady asked questions about the
and heard about the Association j its work, she spontaneously made' donation to the funds. k{i
On Sundays, the coach again friends and relatives to visit while it is also used by a members of a local church to taK party of men out and about. seeing and watching football among the favoured excursions. 1( Friendly visits are paid lonely patients while they are in tal and then continued when PatlLs return to their homes. Many let
pa^j
gr?uPei
regularly
At
?
^
Sprinff
Hospital:A group of escorts
boarding coach to
,
u
fi
on a
shoppy
expedite in
is fine tea is enjoyed under the trees. Some elderly and infirm ladies who would not otherwise go out at all, or who would never receive visitors, are particularly appreciative, especially of the kindly ministrations of the escorts when accidents occur, such as travel
sickness
or
of gratitude show how visits are appreciated;
Put^y-
deeply one
beg
"My dearly beloved friend from outside". Another lady expresses.^
incontinence. 214
eagerness to receive further and her desire to go on a sfaopPi expedition for material to make a c for her new friend. Innumerable
^
1al? 'al-
Hospifr'nSfield Hospifr^nsMd
escorts groupof ofescorts lof,. tal', group ?
lnS lnStotoMatron Matron and and S0lrte 0rrie of her of her staff. staff.
ea are offered and ofTered and
^VrT
ac
lm?n
visitors visitors
as as
with tact tact and and symn with to aa variety variety of tPathY to 0yfmPathy Rubles and and comcomD,piain?ubles Practical help isfe o;1118' pKracticaihe'p Ven Sv
sbhw wm^w
vyhere possible possible ^ere
and
cour.?at,ients iPatients
are (tic a^e
Qq
en" Cllen-
:
hj^e
out-patient to ma^e make the the patients feel try to patients feel that i?rS try lhat of are genuinely are ^ey of the the part 8enuinely part Co c?mni their individual individual through their 'iter Un^ty through intg and ky taking an