Socialities
Two reports custos
Reports from two much underrated voluntary bodies landed on Custos's desk this week. First was from the Family Service Unit, or FSU as it is known to many of the families it has nursed over the last twenty-five years or so.
The FSU has twenty units based around the country. Each unit varies in size — from three or so workers upwards, and has two principal aims. The first is to undertake intensive work with families who, left to themselves, are unable to maintain proper standards of home and child care. The second is to try and study the causes which lead to this kind of disintegration of family life.
Their work, then, should appeal to Sir Keith Joseph who recently launched a major crusade against the 'cycle of deprivation ', but has it? The average wage of all FSU employees from the domestic staff down to the director is £1,451 per year — well below thc otai ling salary for a local authority social worker, and only a few pounds above the qualifying income level for the Government's new poverty benefit, FIS. Isn't it time that some of that much talked of help to voluntary bodies found 'its way into the right coffers?
The second annual report is from the Abbeyfield (Chiswick) Society, a local branch of the national Abbeyfield Society. This local organisation, like its 350 other sister bodies, buys and converts houses into flatlets for groups of old people.
Chiswick branch is one of the most active of the Abbeyfield Societies. Since its first house opened in 1966 it has bought three others, and has now completed for its fifth house. But rocketing house prices are making it increasingly difficult for this voluntary body to increase the scope of its work. Economic rents for its new flatlets come out at around £16 a week, and the Abbeyfield policy of having 'mixed houses' would have had to be dropped had it not been for a large bequest from a local resident.
Details about accommodation in Abbeyfield homes, together with the kind of help local societies need, can be gained from The Abbeyfield Society, 22 Nottingham Place, London WI.
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