Mental health aftercare, her drinking, people stagnating at day care locations, and the ubiquitous antisocial resident are all metioned in Ch 21, which is summarised here.

1. Chapter 21 : The Hostel
from Barbara Taylor ‘The Last Asylum’
*Pine Street provided community care of a kind that is nearly extinct today*.
At Pine Street and Whittingdon Day Hospital patients and staff collaborated to
cure or mitigate mental illness. Some people were chronically ill but others
changed, moved forward. MH officials tried to close the place down, Barbara
was told * ‘People just stagnated there.’ The care from the hostel was in the
mould of Henry Hawkins and The Aftercare Association for Poor and Friendless
Female Convalescents on Leaving Asylums for the Insane. Circle 33 is today like
Together in providing aftercare. She says today there are many different
hostels and these are mainly available only to S117’s as non-ex-detainees are
means tested and have to pay high fees. Barbara notes that even at the peak
of asylum care, most MH people were looked after by their families. She was
not ‘friendless’ but took public health care for granted (cf Israel.) She was an
old hand at shared living, having had a house share, but she found housemates
impinged on her. Her old house share was set up in 1982 and she was asked to
leave. She was the mad woman with the drink in the attic and sometimes she
refused to do her share of household chores. When she got into the Circle 33
hostel she had a wave of freedom, overwhelming. The rooms were small but
her possessions were being looked after by others, and when she got her own
flat 2 ½ years later all her belongings were returned to her. There was an
antisocial resident who ate everything and played loud stereo. She got on well
with anorexic Polly. She heard Polly vomiting sometimes and both Polly and
her were hospitalised twice while at the hostel. Polly may have tried to upset
her friends with her dangerous eating, which even led to A&E due to her
frailty. She had a friendly social worker, and Florence did not throw her out as
she feared might happen. Her analyst said she was now making use of what
was available to her.