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Anxiety of Mothers about Young Children
Parental anxiety is clearly shown in the following summary of the
experiences of a medical officer who also attended sessions for two years
at a children's out-patient department.
Here the medical officer met the same mothers who attended the
local clinics, asking all the time the same questions and getting the same
answers. Not being convinced that the answers were true, these mothers
go from hospital to clinic and vice versa in an attempt to get further
advice, or change the child into one they can accept. In their view it is
the child that must be changed but not themselves.
Liaison between the Hospitals and the Welfare Services
A medical officer of the Department (Dr. V. Tracey) reports that at
the end of two years as Clinical Assistant in a busy children's out-patient
department, an impression remains of great similarity between the
types of cases making frequent attendances at hospitals and those
commonly seen at the various Welfare Centre sessions. When those
children attending hospital because of serious illness are eliminated, one
is left with a large, familiar group of conditions common to both—
children suffering from recurrent respiratory infections, particularly
school entrants, the child who won't eat, or sleep, and children of all
ages who show physical symptoms in response to the stresses and strains
of growing up and adjusting to school life. Not only are the conditions
familiar, often the individuals have been met before at clinics and routine
medical inspections.
The co-operation of the personal health services seems most often to
be sought by the hospital doctor in the case of children of school age.
One is often called upon to answer questions about the types of special
schooling available and then to pass on the necessary case details to the
office so that places in the special schools can be applied for with the
least loss of time. Sometimes, having someone immediately available to
answer a mother's questions about what is entailed in sending a child to
a special school, for example, will help her to agree promptly and without
anxiety to the course recommended.
Occasionally questions arise about the types of courses followed and
the standards likely to be expected in the various categories of day schools,
and here, someone who has visited the schools and so can give a clearer
picture of what is meant by the newer and relatively unfamiliar terms,
such as "secondary modern", "central" or grammar school.
There seems at present to be a less close link between hospitals and
clinics in the case of infants and pre-school children. Babies fortunately
form a relatively small part of the hospital attenders, but their difficulties
frequently centre round diet and feeding, either as a sequel to other illness
or as an initial complaint. Even while attending an out-patient department
every one or two weeks, many mothers continue to attend regularly
at their usual welfare centre. Could this, perhaps, be a point at which a
closer liaison could be established, with the hospitals making a more
deliberate use of the clinics to steer mothers through their difficulties
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