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during the year 927 attendances were made to his clinic.
Child Guidance
The number of cases referred to the Child Guidance Clinic
numbered 23.
Participation in case conferences has continued to be of invaluable
help and interest, and we are grateful to Dr. H. M. S. Davidson,
Consultant Psychiatrist, and her team at the clinic for their enthusiastic
support. It gives me pleasure to include the following report
by Dr. Davidson on the work of her clinic:—
" The work of the Clinic has continued with little change during
1958 but we have met with an increasing interest in our work and a
wish to know more about it.
Though we are called a Child Guidance Clinic we are essentially
a Family Clinic, our patients are members of a family where personalities
react on each other and where problems are closely interrelated.
Children are sent to us through many sources:—School Teacher.
Medical Officer, General Practitioner, Hospitals and Clinics, Children's
Officer, Probation Officer, or the parents or guardians of the
child themselves. They come because someone is worried, either the
child who is anxious and fearful, or the parent or teacher who is
faced with behaviour they do not like but are unable to modify.
The gradual transition from the stage of early childhood where
impulses and emotions are strong and egotistic and self control is
weak, to that of the adult, socially responsible, good citizen is a
difficult one.
It requires a secure background with loving parents who can
supply the child's needs for emotional as well as physical satisfaction
and control him while his own self control is yet weak, and give
him those standards and ideals through personal example which the
child will eventually make his own.
Since parents and children vary in their needs and capacities in
carrying out this task, the sources of maladjustment are legion. Min,r
difficulties abound, as all parents know. Most of them are temporary
It is in overcoming them that parents and children gain in mutual
understanding and capacity to deal with difficulties in life. But sometimes
they do not clear up and may get worse; then the whole
machinery of family relationships is in danger of being thrown out
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