After-Care Society: Aid for Persons Discharged from Asylums: The useful work being done by the After-Care Association, which seeks to assist poor persons discharged recovered from asylums for the insane, was described at a meeting held in Birmingham Council Chamber yesterday afternoon. After addresses had been given, it was decided to form a branch of the Association for Birmingham. The Lord Mayor (Councillor E. Martineau) presided and explained that the aftercare of the insane was one of the bits of ground which they found had been left uncovered in Birmingham. It required special treatment because many of the other charitable associations fought a little shy of this particular class of people. Therefore, it was thought necessary to have a special society to look after such people, but for many reasons it had been considered better that it should be formed as a branch of the National Association rather than as a separate body. The great need of the society was to get a number of people with special training to deal with these special cases. Councillor Mrs. Pinsent gave several reasons why such an association as that suggested should be formed in Birmingham. Patients leaving asylums were less able to help themselves than almost any other class of patients and one thing which stood out clearly in all the methods of modern charity was the temptation that it was really no lasting good treating a malady itself if the individual was returned to the same surroundings and environment, which were more or less the cause of the malady. Councillor David Davis eulogised the work of Mrs. Pinsent on the Asylum Committee and said her advent on the committee could not but result in the greatest amount of good for the asylum administration and the patients themselves. The resolution to form a branch of the society was unanimously carried, and the Lord Mayor was appointed, with others, to form a committee.
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Referenced
GRO0245 Devonport: Ellen Frances Parker: 1866 – 1949