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referred so that, through early treatment, they may be given the best
chance of winning for themselves a place in normal society."
The Vale Road Day Special School continues to provide mainly for
other forms of physical handicap, references to the type of cases and
change in pattern being referred to on page 92. The demand for ancillary
medical workers at the school has increased and during the autumn
term two physiotherapists were engaged to devote seven sessions in all
to children other than those suffering from cerebral palsy, the work of the
physiotherapists being under the general direction of Mr. E. Hambly
F.R.C.S. of the Prince of Wales's General Hospital and of Mr. E. T.
Bailey, F.R.C.S. at Highlands Hospital. Formerly many of these children
had lost two or three half-days a week travelling to hospital for physiotherapy.
The speech therapists, too, have continued their work with
several difficult and interesting cases referred to in Miss Came's report.
Speech Therapy
Miss Came, Senior Speech Therapist, reports as follows:—
"The accompanying table shows that the majority of children suffering
from dyslalia were referred before six years of age. This satisfactory
result is largely due to teachers' recognition that speech therapy frequently
assists educational progress.
In stammering, early treatment has also proved the most effective.
The speech therapists aim to prevent (a) the fixing of early speech nonfluency
through the parents' well-intentioned but ill-informed interference,
and then labelling the child "a stammerer"; (b) the formation of
abnormal secondary symptoms, due to anxiety and increasing awareness
of speech difference, causing the disorder to become self-perpetuating.
It is therefore most important that all concerned with small children
should refer those with any speech defect or delayed speech to the speech
therapist as early as possible.
During 1956, treatment was carried out in the various groups on the
following lines:—
1. Pre-school children. Treatment was mainly indirect, through
talks with the mother. This preventive work has proved of
particular value in cases of primary stammering. Improvement is
more rapid, and final recovery more complete.
2. Infant school children. These formed the largest group treated.
Many were discharged as normal speakers, before entry to the
junior school.
3. Older children. These were fewer in number, but their difficulties
slower in responding to treatment. Work with the older stammerer
aims to reduce anxiety and increase insight.
4. Children with severe speech abnormality, sometimes associated
with such disabilities as cerebral palsy. These are treated at
Vale Road School for the Physically Handicapped. In all cases
the improvement resulting from speech therapy has been
measurable, although it is inevitably achieved far more slowly."
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