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During the year 15 school children were provided with hearing aids and at the
end of the year 91 school children were known to have hearing aids.
Child Guidance Service
Under the joint administrative responsibility of the Chief Education Officer and
myself the Local Authority Child Guidance Service operates from centres at:-
304, Regents Park Road,
Finchley, N.3.
and
The Health Clinic,
Vale Drive,
Barnet, Herts.
Dr. A.D. Black, Consultant Child Psychiatrist and Medical Director at the
Finchley Centre reports:-
"The year 1970 was marked by the appointment of a Consultant Psychiatrist and
Medical Director to the second Child Guidance Centre at Vale Drive Clinic, High
Barnet, in June. From the point of view of the psychiatric services, the two clinics
were then administered separately.
During the year, 149 new cases were referred to the Psychiatrist at the Finchley
Child Guidance Centre, of whom 82 cases were accepted for diagnostic examination.
68 new cases were actually seen diagnostically. In some of the others, preliminary
interviews with our Psychiatric Social Workers lead to the family or the Centre
deciding our agency was inappropriate. In a few cases, all appointments offered were
failed, and in an increasing number, consultation was offered to the referring agency,
which sometimes enabled resolution of the presenting problem without the family
needing to be seen diagnostically at the Centre.
As found previously, over 50% of families referred were at the instigation of the
school, either directly or through the School Medical Officer, or the Educational
Psychologist. Significantly, schools referred considerably more boys than girls,
although in the total number seen at the Clinic, the sexes were approximately equally
represented. On the other hand, General Practitioners who referred 25% of the cases
seen, referred significantly more girls than boys. The vast work of the Clinic during
1970 was providing various forms of treatment for the families seen in 1969 which continued
well into 1970. The main service that the Clinic offers to the community is
psychiatric treatment in depth. The major form of treatment used at the Clinic is child
and family psychotherapy and casework by Psychiatric Social Workers with parents and
whole families. The child referred is often the "presenting symptom" of a complex
family problem, and the diagnostic process elucidates the underlying problem of the
family which might require many of its members to undergo treatment, either individually
or as a family.
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