NOTES AND ABSTRACTS.
The Employment of the Feeble-Minded. I have been asked to give some account of the work of the Birmingham After-Care Committee. It is now in the fourth year of its existence, and I think it may claim to have already accumulated some useful evidence bearing on the problems which are continually puzzling those who are engaged in the work of educating the mentally defective.
Such " After-Care Committees," or " committees of inquiry," as I should prefer to call them, find their most useful work in ascertaining the results of special class teaching of the feeble-minded, or the lack of results, as the case may be, when they have gone back to the ordinary life of the families to which they belong. It is most important in determining the ultimate fate of such children, and the practical worth of the laborious and expensive education which we provide for them, that committees shall be established to watch and to record the future of all who pass through special classes. It is only by doing this methodically for a considerable number of years that we can obtain any accurate knowledge as to the adequacy of special class teaching to prevent mental defectives from becoming social parasites. How many of them become wage-earners? How many become self-supporting? How many ultimately get into prison or into the workhouse? What proportion of them have children, and of these children how many become drunkards, prostitutes, criminals, or are themselves mentally defective?
These committees of inquiry have two distinct tasks laid upon them. In addition to the more or less statistical investigation and the collection of evidence, the importance of which there is a tendency to undervalue, there is the additional object of influencing the lives of the feeble-minded in the homes to which they have gone by occasional visits on the part of members of the After-Care Committee. While I do not wish to underrate the value of this side of the work, if I am truly to express my own opinion, founded on our experience in Birmingham, I must say that I think the personal influence of the after-care member in the homes of the feeble-minded is practically nil, except in a few rare cases. No influence that is not continuous in its action can ever be effective with weak-minded individuals. When it is considered that in a majority of cases the parents to which the children return are degraded, drunken, or themselves feeble-minded, the almost hopeless- ness of the case becomes apparent.
Our investigations show that out of eighty-three mental defectives now on our after-care list, only twenty-six are wage-earners. The average weekly wage, of 6s. id., of these twenty-six has gone down and not up, as it should do. This is probably due partly to the general depression of trade, during which the weakest individuals suffer first, and partly to the undoubted tendency of the feeble-minded to degenerate when discipline and control are relaxed upon leaving school.
On the whole, our after-care evidence shows that only about 17 per cent. have a chance of becoming permanently self-supporting ; the remaining 83 per cent, will require permanent protection and partial support.
But I should like to point out that it is probable that certain improvements in the education of these defectives would considerably increase the percentage of the self-supporting. For example, the irregularity of attendance and the frequent disappearance of these children constitute a very strong argument in favor of substituting boarding-schools for the special class teaching. The work begun in boarding-schools should be continued in an industrial colony, which seems from the evidence already collected to be the only satisfactory method of dealing with a large percentage of cases. No scheme can be complete until we have further legislation which will enable us to detain all feeble-minded persons who are incapable of self-support except under control in such industrial colonies.
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