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service" training for our staff—was taken last year when the interested
medical officers and health visitors began to participate in case
conferences at the Ilford Child Guidance Clinic.
Two main developments have taken place this year. Hitherto
the Child Guidance team has dealt with cases of established behaviour
disorders in children of school age. In our case conferences we have
been struck how, time and time again, the story has emerged of mishandling
by parents since the child's babyhood and the presence of
symptoms from those earliest days. It seems so much more logical
to treat such disorders when they first arise, than to stand by and
await the development of serious trouble in later years. Dr. Davidson,
Consultant Psychiatrist at the Ilford Child Guidance Clinic, has very
kindly devoted some of her own time to the experiment of herself
attending infant welfare clinics to advise mothers of babies showing
symptoms of early behaviour disorder.
This help has been much appreciated by our own staff, and by
the mothers who do not have to make special visits to a Child
Guidance Cilnic outside their district. We soon realized, however,
that this method could only scratch the surface of the problem.
Dr. Davidsocould not possibly devote enough time to see all such
mothers at each clinic. Even more important was the fact that we
were not satisfied with early treatment—we wanted to prevent troubles
arising. Clearly this could only be achieved by the health visitors
and medical officers who, with adequate knowledge and experience,
could education mothers-to-be before their babies were even born. Dr.
Davidson ther fore agreed to come along to our Welfare Clinics, not
to see mothrs herself, but to discuss problems with the appropriate
health visitor and medical officer and advise them how to deal with
the more difficults cases. This indirect method will enable more early
behaviour problems to be treated, and will give our own staff the
insight and knowledge for their real work—that of prevention.
Infant Death.
Twenty infants under 1 year of age died during the year, and of
these 16 babies died within the first month of life. These figures
compare well with 1953 when 29 infants died in their first year of life,
22 of them the first month. It will be seen from these figures that
the main problems still lie in conditions arising during the neo-natal
period. These problems are closely related to those of still-births, of
which 29 occurred during the year as compared with 33 in 1953.
This loss of infant life has already been fully discussed.
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