ABSTRACT
IT is not easy to present a generalized picture of the hospitals studied in terms of bricks and mortar, firstly because unlike the majority of institutional buildings that house individuals who, for one reason or another, are segregated from the community, the hospitals for the subnormal tend, as we have already suggested, to consist of highly variegated complexes of buildings, rarely purpose-built, and often scattered between several sites. Only in the case of four of the thirty-four hospitals in the sample were all the units to be found on a single site, and a further nine were divided between two sites. The remainder comprised institutions scattered over between three and fifteen sites, many as much as thirty miles apart, and in two instances as far as ninety miles from the main administrative centre. The sense of isolation felt by the staff in some units is not difficult to understand. More detailed descriptions of the buildings, and the number of patients living in each unit, as well as the distance between the units and the main administrative centre are set out in tabular form in Appendix F. For purposes of simplification a summary of this information is set out in Table 5.1 below: 1
|
Total no. of pts. in hosp. complex |
No. of hospital complexes |
Average no. of sites |
Mean distance of units from main hospital (miles) |
|---|---|---|---|
|
1,800 and over |
4 |
4.0 |
30.4 |
|
1,000 – 1,799 |
15 |
5.0 |
19.0 |
|
300 – 999 |
12 |
4.7 |
23.8 |
|
Under 300 |
3 |
1.7 |
9.0 |
