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Speech therapy
Some of the children attending schools for the physically handicapped have speech
defects. In earlier years such children went out from school to speech therapy centres,
with the consequent waste of school time, but since 1952 the practice of carrying out
speech therapy in the special school has been developed. The great benefit of better
continuity in the handling of the speech problem has derived from the close contact
between the speech therapist and teaching staff. By the end of 1957, 31 speech therapy
sessions a week were held in 14 schools for the physically handicapped.
Transport of handicapped pupils
From the very beginnings of the special schools it was necessary to arrange transport
to and from school for crippled children, and the photograph opposite page 136, shows
one of the very early ' cripple carts \
Today the school bus service uses 56 vehicles, all of the 22 seater pattern, on this
work, and the average daily number carried by each bus is 19 children. Each bus covers
on an average 15 miles in the course of a school round, and the weekly mileage is well
over 8,000 miles. Usually the first child is collected between 8.10 and 8.20 a.m., and the
time of arrival at the school is some time between 9.15 and 9.30 a.m. Thus the first
child on the round may spend just over an hour on the journey to school, but the trip
is varied and interesting as friends are collected at different points en route. The last
child to board may have as little as five minutes on the bus. The route is arranged so
that the child with the longest journey in the morning has the shortest journey at night.
Some children require special attention and have to be lifted bodily into their seats,
or to travel in wheel chairs. At the present there are 20 such cases distributed over eight
schools ; 14 of these children travel in wheel chairs which have to be pushed up a ramp
into the vehicle, as is shown in the photograph opposite page 136. The other six children
are lifted out of their wheel chairs, carried into their seats in the bus, and the wheel chairs
are folded up and accompany the children to school.
It is hoped that a start can be made in 1958 towards discontinuing the use of ramps,
by introducing vehicles which are to be modified by fitting a ' Burtonwood Lift'.
This apparatus resembles a mechanically operated tailboard which lowers to the ground
and on which the wheel chair, containing the patient, can be raised from ground level
to the floor level of the bus.
The Council has accepted the principle that a physically handicapped but academically
brilliant pupil should not be ascertained and sent to a special school merely because
transport is available to such a school, and thus be denied the advantages of education
in, say, a grammar school, because transport to the latter is not practicable under the
normal school bus arrangements.
During 1957, under special routing arrangements, 26 pupils were carried by the
school bus service to their ordinary schools ; one of these pupils has been conveyed to
ordinary school since June, 1951. Sometimes it is not practicable to fit a child's journey
into any of the school bus routes, and in such cases taxis or cars are hired. Five pupils
are currently being conveyed to and from school by hired car. Two cerebral palsied
children are taken to and from a boarding special school as day pupils, nearly 95 per
cent, of the cost of their transport being offset by the saving of boarder's fees, and, in
any case, it is obviously in the children's own best interests to be able to live at home.
New day school for the physically-handicapped
The Franklin Delano Roosevelt School, opened in January, 1957, was designed to
accommodate 160 physically-handicapped children of both sexes and all ages from
5 to 15 years.
To enable the children to move about with ease, the whole building has one floor
level only throughout, including the external paved areas which are directly accessible
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