Einstein Medical Center to Organize Day Care Center for Mentally Retarded

The Albert Einstein Medical Center has signed an agreement with the Philadelphia School District to organize and run a 70-pupil day care center for mentally retarded children on a 12-month, five-day-a-week basis, it was announced here today by Bertram Zimmerman, acting general director of the Center’s 700-bed northern division. The Center will lease school-rooms of Temple Judea for the purpose. It hopes to have the facility in operation by late spring, Zimmerman said. The Albert Einstein Medical Center is a constituent of the Federation of Jewish Agencies of Greater Philadelphia and of the United Fund of the Philadelphia area. Zimmerman announced the appointment of Peter S. Bodenheimer as coordinator of the day care center. Bodenheimer is also coordinator of mental retardation services of the AEMC Community Mental Health Center and Mental Retardation Center. He has invited applications from parents and from persons seeking positions at the day care center.

Bodenheimer said the day care center would occupy seven classrooms, and auditorium and outdoor play area limited to 70 children. He said he hoped that 50 of the youngsters would fall into the three-to-eight year old bracket, afflicted with mild and moderate retardation problems which “with proper action at this time may be modified.” He said the rest of the children, aged from three-16 would be more severely limited in their physical and mental abilities. The AEMC Community Health/Mental Retardation Center, established under a Federal grant from the National institute of Mental Health as part of the Einstein Northern Division of Psychiatry, is beginning to provide mental health and mental retardation services for some 200,000 persons in the Philadelphia area, Zimmerman said. He said it was “the first medically related off-site venture of the medical center as part of our wide mental health commitment.”