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Psychiatric
services at
boarding
special
school and
residential
establishments
In accordance with the Council's policy to make available psychiatric advice at all
residential establishments for children, efforts continued to be made throughout the year
to ensure regular visits of a psychiatrist, assisted by a psychiatric social worker wherever
necessary. The demand for these services has been growing, as the value to the staff of
the psychiatrist's assistance in handling the children in their care has been more widely
appreciated. During 1956, therefore, two new part-time psychiatrists took up duty with
the Council. The recruitment of psychiatric social workers for work in the boarding
special schools, however, proved very difficult and one of the schools unfortunately
had to be left without full coverage for several months. It also proved impossible to fill
vacancies for part-time psychiatric social workers at any of the approved schools.
Day schools
for
maladjusted
children
A second day school for maladjusted children, Moatbridge School in Eltham, was
opened during the year and organised in the same way as the Lilian Baylis School, on
which I reported in 1955 (page 119). Regular visits were paid by one of the psychiatrists
to see individual children and to take part in case conferences and a psychiatric social
worker established contact with the children's homes to ensure the co-operation of the
parents during out-of-school hours.
Miss G. Clarkson and Miss P. Winterbottom, two of the psychiatric social workers
allocated to schools for maladjusted children, write :
The psychiatric social worker (P.S.W.) in a school for maladjusted children is part of
a team who is trying to help emotionally disturbed children to develop to the utmost of
their own potentialities, and to help their parents and families to make this possible.
While the teaching staff and, in the boarding school, the resident child-care staff too, work
directly with the children, the P.S.W. is mainly concerned with the parents, who
themselves are frequently very disturbed people with the burden of a disturbed child.
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