Who is the right person to look after the mentally retarded?

Abstract

A committee was set up in Britain in 1975 under the Chairmanship of Mrs Peggy Jay to look into the staffing of mental handicapped residential care in the National Health Service. Part of the task was to consider the Briggs Committee’s recommendation that “… a new caring profession for the mentally handicapped should emerge gradually”. The findings and recommendations of the committee were however radical and far-reaching, involving an enormous shift in financial resources and causing much concern and outcry from the nursing profession which considered the new category of care given as a threat to their existence.