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APPENDIX B
PSYCHOLOGICAL SERVICES FOR CHILDREN IN LONDON—
FROM BURT TO UNDERWOOD
I—Introduction
The year 1959, which saw the Mental Health Act and Ministry of Health and Ministry
of Education Circulars implementing recommendations of the 'Underwood Committee,'
affords an opportunity to review the growth and development of aspects of the mental
health services for children which were not covered by the article on 'The ascertainment,
care, education and training of educable mentally handicapped children 'in my report
for 1958.
Psychology, in the widest sense of the term, now extends to a number of fields in which
the Council has an interest. These may be classed broadly as child guidance services;
special educational provision; school psychological service; advisory services to juvenile
courts, residential establishments and the maternity and child welfare service. Whilst most
of the developments are of recent growth, the beginnings can now be clearly seen to have
occurred nearly forty years ago.
II—Child guidance services
(a) Early beginnings—As an organised movement, and in the particular sense that the
words are now used, child guidance was introduced into this country in the mid-twenties,
mainly through the generosity of the Commonwealth Fund of America. The Child Guidance
Council was established in 1927 as the central voluntary organisation 'to encourage the
provision of skilled treatment of children showing behaviour disturbances and early
symptoms of disorder'. This body approached the London County Council to obtain its
support for the establishment in London of a child guidance clinic of the kind widely
established in the United States of America and Canada. As a result two officers of the
Council were included in a group of social and other workers which visited America, at
the expense of the Commonwealth Fund, to report on the methods followed there.
In 1928, after consideration of the reports of the team which had visited America, the
London County Council accepted the offer of the Child Guidance Council to open a
clinic in London:
(a) for the investigation of difficult, maladjusted or delinquent children;
(b) to treat symptoms so as to prevent further trouble;
and (c) to establish harmony between the child and his environment, home life, school
and play.
An important part of the reports of the visiting team had been concerned with staff
training, and four assistant organisers of children's care work spent a year in America,
again at the expense of the Commonwealth Fund of America, in order to take a course
of training as psychiatric social workers.
The London Child Guidance Clinic was opened in 1929 at Canonbury with Dr. William
Moodie as medical director. (It is now called the London Child Guidance Training Centre.)
One of the assistant organisers who had taken the course of training in America was
appointed chief psychiatric social worker. A course in mental welfare was arranged at
the London School of Economics for the training of psychiatric social workers, the London
Clinic being used for demonstration and practice. Four of the Council's organisers of
children's care work were sent on this course. The whole expense of these developments
was borne by the Commonwealth Fund, which continued to finance the movement on a
generous, but gradually diminishing scale, until the outbreak of war in 1939.
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