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In 1956 another 87 school leavers were in need of voluntary supervision only.
Section 8 of the Education (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1948, enables a review
to be made in the case of any child who has been reported to the local health authority
under Section 57 (3) of the Education Act, 1944, and gives authority for the cancellation
of the report where the child on re-examination, is found to be educable. During 1956
six reports were cancelled and all the children concerned were ascertained as educationally
sub-normal
Cerebral
palsy
During the year there was in progress a comprehensive statistical survey of all
children in the administrative county known to the Council to be sufferers from cerebral
palsy. Over 700 completed questionnaires were received from hospitals, institutions,
schools, maternity and child welfare centres, etc., but the necessary statistical tabulations
and analyses had not been completed by the end of the year.
Dr. W. Dunham, who in 1955 was appointed the Council's consultant in cerebral
palsy, writes as follows :
The subject of infantile cerebral palsy is still a controversial one, but it is agreed that,
whatever the kind of palsy, the defect in these conditions is one of brain. It is agreed,
too, that palsy interferes with the acquisition of achievements, making the learning of
activities called for in everyday life difficult. It follows that children with palsy need
help in this learning to achieve competence. If a child fails to learn competence, medical
science cannot provide this for him, though it can devise ways in which he can be helped
to learn.
The Pre-school Child—The child's range of activities expands most rapidly in the
early months of life, and the efficiency he achieves in the simplest of these activities forms
the foundation on which the more complex are later built. For a child for whom
efficiency is difficult of attainment, help must be provided early. To make this possible,
early recognition that the child has such a difficulty is essential, though it may well be
that the evidence of abnormality is slight. It is with the aim of improving the reliability
of the criteria upon which early diagnosis of cerebral palsy can be based that research,
initiated under the auspices of the Medical Research Council and continued with the
support of Queen Mary's Hospital, Carshalton and the Charing Cross Hospital, has
continued during the year in the divisions. The number of babies and young children
examined now exceeds 150. A report is being prepared in association with Mrs. Eirene
Collis on the findings in the course of this research. As a valuable though incidental
outcome of the research, in which medical officers, midwives and health visitors in the
divisions have collaborated, 23 babies with cerebral palsy were discovered and referred
for special care : it was possible to reassure the mothers of 24 children who had previously
been suspected of having cerebral palsy that their children were normal.
Children of School Age—The first consideration in arranging schooling for a child
with cerebral palsy is, of course, to obtain education appropriate to his intellectual
capacity : whether or not he must be given special consideration as a physically handicapped
child will depend on his ability to compete without harm with physically normal
children. In many instances such children are unable to compete in this way and must
be accommodated in day or residential schools for the physically handicapped. The
number attending the Council's schools for physically handicapped children during the
year was 341, of whom 38, mainly for social reasons, were admitted to residential
schools.
H*
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