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Dr. Yarrow, Deputy Area Medical Officer, reports as follows on the
local provisions for the care of the physically handicapped child.
This year has been one of consolidation of the work done in previous
years in this field of the School Health Service. The opening of special
schools for physically handicapped and deaf children elsewhere in the
County has entailed some alteration in placement of children at Vale
Road School for Physically Handicapped Children and at the Blanche
Nevile School for Deaf Children in Tottenham although no child was
moved where this was thought undesirable on medical or educational
grounds. The provision of further school places elsewhere for E.S.N
children meant a considerable easing of the position at Oak Lodge
(Finchley) and this has had the result of virtually eliminating the Hornsey
waiting list for such children.
During 1956 consent was obtained from the Ministry of Education to
the opening of an Audiology Unit in Tottenham for the ascertainment
and supervision of young deaf children. Unfortunately its opening was
followed shortly after by the prolonged absence through illness of the
Visiting Aurist, Dr. F. P. M. Clarke, so that a real start could only be
made with this on his return to health.
The separation of partially deaf children from the deaf has been of
great value in the younger age group and it is hoped that a unit for
senior partially deaf pupils will, during 1957, be opened at the new
Markfield (Secondary Modern) School in Tottenham. The degree of
integration with normal hearing children would be much greater with
these older children than is at present the case at the Devonshire Hill
class for junior partially deaf children.
With so much work accomplished in the field of provision of new
facilities for handicapped children in the past few years, it is useful now
to have a period in which we can take stock. As is well known, there
has been a revolution in medicine over the past few years and this has
had far-reaching effects on the type of child needing special educational
treatment, and less apparent effect on the numbers. An attempt has been
made here to consider these changes as they affect the problem of the
deaf and physically handicapped categories of school children. The use
of prophylactic technique (e.g. B.C.G. vaccination of infants) and chemotherapeutic
drugs and antibiotics has wrought far reaching changes in
the types of children reaching the Blanche Nevile School for the Deaf.
These drugs, the sulphonamides, penicillin and streptomycin at first
succeeded in saving the lives of a great many children who would otherwise
have died of meningitis but unfortunately many of the survivors
were afflicted with deafness, some as a result of streptomycin therapy.
This phase has been succeeded by another in which therapeutic techniques
seem to have greatly improved so that the survivors are not being deafened.
Tables A and B illustrate these phases admirably. Table A shows the
causes of deafness in the various age groups among deaf and partially
deaf children at special schools (both day and residential) in the Autumn
term of 1956. Table B was prepared from the register of the Blanche
Nevile School as at September 1951 and the two together illustrate the
changes that have taken place in five years.
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