View report page

156
for any special measures in regard to prolonged residential treatment or admission
to special schools could be impressed upon the parents.
In London the school doctors are paying special attention to rheumatism, a
register of all cases has been established, school supervision is being carried out, and
residential accommodation for acute and sub-acute cases is being organised. What
is now chiefly required is the development of local supervisory centres. Already in the
north-western division of London three rheumatism supervisory centres have been
established, viz., in Paddington, Marylebone and Kensington. During the coming
year it is hoped that five more centres will be established in connection with hospitals
or treatment centres in the four divisions in which no provision of the kind as yet
exists. All children discharged from residential treatment will be specially considered
from the standpoint of the advisability of their further education in special day
schools while continued supervision will be ensured.
Other
physical
defects.
Tuberculosis, poliomyelitis, encephalitis, epilepsy and rheumatism are the main
causes ot crippling in childhood. There remains for consideration the comparatively
small group in which the condition results from trauma, congenital defect or vascular
lesions, such as hemiplegia. In the case of congenital defects or vascular lesions, in
which there are mental changes as well as physical disabilities, the machinery of the
Mental Deficiency Act can often be utilised to secure adequate and prolonged
treatment. In the case of combined defect in which it is often found that, although
neither mental nor physical defect alone would prohibit instruction in a school, the
two together render this impracticable, the difficulties of obtaining sanction under
regulation 5 are very great. Perhaps this difficulty may be reduced by the provisions
of the Mental Deficiency Act of 1927.
So far as traumata, congenital defects and miscellaneous causes of physical
disability are concerned, it has been found that the ordinary resources of the voluntary
hospitals, coupled with existing day school accommodation, are in the main adequate.
When necessary, however, the Council as an education authority makes arrangements
for maintaining or contributing to the cost of maintenance and education of a child
in a residential hospital school where education may be continued while the child
receives the necessary surgical treatment. Children are admitted to residential
schools for the physically defective who are in need of prolonged or continuous
treatment which would prevent attendance at a day P.D. school, but who could be
educated at a residential school while receiving such treatment. As regards children
at the orthopaedic hospitals, the Special Services Sub-Committee recently
decided:—
(a) That the authorities of the orthopaedic hospitals be informed that the
Council, as education authority, cannot see its way to accept liability for the
education and maintenance of children at the residential school carried
on in the hospital whose stay at the hospital was likely to be less than three
months.
(b) That no action be taken to obtain the admission of children to the
residential school carried on in the hospital who are normally in attendance at
ordinary elementary schools.
(c) That arrangements be made for the admission to the school of children
on behalf of whom applications are received from the hospital authorities in
the undermentioned cases, subject to the stay at the hospital being likely to
exceed three months, at the cost stated below:—
(1) Cost of education only in cases where children are normally in
attendance at day schools for the physically defective.
(2) Cost of education and maintenance in cases where the physical
defect is such that the children are unable to attend day schools for the
physically defective, but are not unable to benefit by the instruction given
in the hospital school.