New Care for the Blind • Sir Kingsley Wood's announcement
of the Govern- ment's new policy for the blind contains three chief features. The first is, that the starting age of old age pensions for blind people, which at present is 50, will be lowered to 40. The second, that payments by way of domiciliary assistance to blind people shall be made under the Blind Persons Act instead of under the Poor Law. The third, that enterprises for training and employing blind persons, whether run by -local authorities or by voluntary organisations, will receive further State encouragement. These are all excellent points— the first recommended more than once by the Advisory Committee on the Welfare of the-Blind. The necessary legislation will be passed next Session. There are about 75,000 blind persons in the Kingdom; about a third of whom are over 50. It is an aggregate large enough to invite serious effort, yet small enough, in pro- portion to total population, to warrant - more generous treatment than the nation has hitherto extended to them. Of course the ideal policy towards blindness is to stop it at the source. The largest source is ophthalmia neonatorum; cases of which have, since 1925, been reduced by about 20 per cent., but ought eventually to be made as rare as typhus or cholera.
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