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is hardly a week without cases being referred for reports to the Courts.
"Owing to the large number of deprived or rejected children referred to the
Clinic, we often have to resort to such means as changing schools, transferring
to boarding schools or children's homes, requesting holidays or asking for
escorts to hospitals.
"In order to deal with the children's problems more effectively we have
multi-disciplinarian case conferences once a month; also recently we have
started group therapy for adolescents.
"We would not have been able to cope with these problems without the
excellent co-operation of the School Health Service, the Special Services in
the Education Department and the Children's Department, and the great help
from the educational psychologists, remedial teacher and secretarial staff in
the Clinic."
ADOLESCENT CLINIC
We started an Adolescent Clinic at Porters Avenue Clinic towards the end
of 1966, with a group of fourteen-year-olds from a secondary modern school.
The attendance has been very encouraging though fluctuating as might be
expected. Mostly girls, but also quite a number of boys have been taking part
in the sessions.
Films, such as "From Girl to Woman" and "Learning to Live", which dealt
with the growing-up period quite well, and also a film on V.D. with some
explanatory talks, were welcomed seriously and with great interest. The
discussions and comments which followed these films were quite revealing.
Talks and slides about the care of skin, relating to the "spots" of adolescence,
and also nutrition, were well accepted.
In the summer term we ventured to make a film of our own. We had a
rather old-fashioned, but basically sound, film on the ever-recurring theme,
entitled "Mother, can I go out tonight?" Our youngsters wrote a new script
with a very lively and impressive dialogue. With the very kind and expert
co-operation of the Health Education Officer and his assistant, who acted as
producer, director and camera-men and with the youngsters as actors, we
produced a film which actually needs only the adding of the sound track.
In the autumn term of 1967 we started with a new group from the same
school and the attendance was also about 25 to 30.
We are still very much in the experimental stage and we wish to encourage
more group discussion among the young people themselves, as this has not always
been achieved.
We are grateful for the encouragement, enthusiasm and helpfulness of the
Headmaster and Headmistress of the school.
All this has been very useful experience, and we hope to learn a lot more
in the future.
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