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* Including Rayners for dual defects.

Epileptic children
At the beginning of the year arrangements were made for an assistant medical
officer, Dr. Margaret Fynne, to see all epileptic children who were considered to be
likely to need special education. This arrangement better enables a standard of
the need for boarding school education to be maintained and allows of more thorough
preliminary enquiries from general practitioners and hospitals. Above all the
medical officer can devote part of her time to interviewing the staffs of ordinary
schools that are to be asked to accept epileptic children. Centralisation of this
nature is undesirable, but, while what is in effect a new approach to the problem is
being worked out, it serves a useful pupose.
The proper place for an epileptic child is in his home and in a day school, but,
to secure this, effective treatment must be maintained and the co-operation of teaching
staffs, other children in the school and their parents secured. Only uncontrollable
epileptics and those in whom control is being established need to be in special
boarding schools. The presence of a nurse, even for part of the day, in day schools
for P.H. children is a great help and, could the nurse be there for the whole day,
it would be possible for some more seriously affected epileptic children to attend
these schools rather than go to boarding schools.
During the year Dr. Fynne attended a course organised by the British Epilepsy
Association and later addressed divisional representatives of the social-medical
workers, and the divisional nursing officers.
Partially sighted children
The Council's day schools for the partially sighted were visited during the year
by Dr. C. B. Huss of the Ministry of Education. Dr. Huss reported that he was
impressed with the excellent manner in which ophthalmic records were kept. In the
case of the myopes in particular, who formed by far the greatest number of children
in the schools, full fundus changes had been recorded, increase in these changes
noted, anxiety felt about any child expressed and results of consultations with teachers
recorded. Thus it was possible to follow what was in the ophthalmic surgeon's
mind at the time of the examination and so to understand the reason why any child