Social Work and Hostels for Special Groups

Hostels for people able to work but needing special help for a period in order to live independently developed slowly during the period and with a number of false starts. They catered for some extremely damaged, aggressive or withdrawn, dependent, hostile and disturbed or delinquent people, and although their potentialities as a sheltered entry to ordinary life were recognised, these potentialities were only realised in individual instances. More was written about hostels for offenders than those for young people in care or for ex-psychiatric patients; while unfortunately these accounts were full of gaps and usually not comparable. None the less a common pattern ran through them, a pattern of regimes that were sometimes too restricting or too unstructured, with ill-defined aims, unsuitable premises and overwhelming demands on the staff. Staffing was naturally the key issue. Everything depended upon the warden, but often the staff/resident ratio was insufficient, there was a heavy staff turnover, assistant staff were young, inexperienced and untrained, staff accommodation was poor and added to stress, while in most instances there was too little support for the staff from the service concerned. In any event, many residents were far too disturbed to be effectively helped with the resources available. What was clearly indicated - though not undertaken - was a major research-orientated inquiry into the separate and unrelated provision of an essentially similar service, in order to identify its strengths, how these could be reinforced, and the weaknesses eliminated or reduced.