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Residential
schools.
There are 10 residential schools (3 industrial, 2 for blind, 2 for deaf, 1 for defective
deaf, 1 for mentally defective boys and 1 for mentally defective girls) with a total
accommodation for 712 residential, and 222 day scholars. To each institution is
allocated a medical officer and provision has been made for dental inspection and
treatment. During the year, 586 boys were admitted to Pentonville Road Place
of Detention and 249 girls and infants to Ponton Road Place of Detention.
Dr. F. C.
Shrubsall's
report on the
ascertainment
of the
mentally
defective.
The work of the Council as a local education authority relative to mentally
defective children may perhaps be viewed in a more interesting perspective in
connection with the action taken by the Council as a local control authority, since
any children who are found to be, or are suspected to be, mentally defective while
of tender years may again come to notice during school ages, while those who are
ascertained later must, ex-hypothesi, if rightly certified under the definitions of the
Mental Deficiency Acts, have been defective during their school age, even if their
conduct was such that their defect was not noticed at that time. Under the relevant
Acts the duty of ascertaining and providing for the mentally defective under the
age of seven years, and over the age of sixteen, rests with the Council as a local
control authority, while between the ages of seven and sixteen years the duty rests
with it as a local education authority.
From the date of the coming in force of the Act of 1913, the duty of ascertainment
of defectives of all ages has been assigned by the Council to the officers of the
public health department, a procedure which provides for a uniformity of standardisation
which could not be secured easily in any other manner.
The conditions bringing cases to notice naturally differ in these groups as do the
powers for dealing with them. There is a slight degree of overlapping in the younger
cases between the education and control authorities, for though the duties of the
education authority in reference to mentally defectives are limited to the period
between seven and sixteen years of age, their general duties as an education authority
commence at an earlier age, and a defective child may come to notice as soon as the
period of compulsory education commences, if not as soon as voluntary attendance
at an elementary school is permissive.
The special importance of the school in the scheme of general ascertainment
depends on the fact that its activities cover a cross section of practically the entire
child population.
During the year the cases which had been referred and dealt with under the Mental
Deficiency Act during the two previous years, 1925 and 1926, have been analysed
to show the relative importance of the different sources of information:—
Cases under the age of seven.—During the two years referred to, 125 cases were
15436
L2