A Review of the Hostel Situation in County Down, Northern Ireland

In 1972 a working party was set up to report on the hostel situation in Co. Down, Northern Ireland, and to make recommendations regarding future needs. This paper describes briefly the method adopted to arrive at such findings and the results and recommendations of the report. Hostels have been in existence in Co. Down since 1963 and have increased from four beds to 102 beds at the time of the report. The present set-up consists of seven hostels throughout the county. These are supervised and are not mixed hostels; other descriptive aspects of the structure and population are mentioned. The potential hostel candidates both in the hospital, which is the main source of referral to hostels, and in the community were evaluated. This was done by means of two questionnaires; one for the hospital and one for the community. The former yielded 46 candidates of whom 32 are described in greater detail regarding diagnosis, age, degree of supervision required, etc. The latter yielded 136 candidates who were divided into four categories, depending on the type of hostel needed. The needs of the alcoholic patients are discussed separately. Other aspects are discussed such as financial problems, selection procedure, the method of collecting information and the significance of the figures. Finally, recommendations are made regarding modification of the present set-up and the establishment of more hostels based on the data obtained from the report.