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HANDICAPPED CHILDREN UNDER
FIVE YEARS OF AGE
REPORT OF A SURVEY BY DR. MAIR
The increasing emphasis that is rightly being placed on the early ascertainment of
defects, both physical and mental, in children who may need special educational treatment
when they come of school age has shown that there is a widespread lack of knowledge
of the handicapped children under 5 years of age.
These children are not compulsorily notifiable to the health authority by the parents,
general practitioners, or hospitals, and many have in the past gone unnoticed except for
routine visits to the home by health visitors, and occasional visits to the Infant Welfare
Clinics by some mothers and children—but if the treatment they were receiving seemed
satisfactory and no action was necessary under the Education Act (e.g. ascertainment
of mental defectives over the age of 2), then no central register of their progress was
kept.
The size of the problem was therefore unknown, and it was obvious that the first
essential in any scheme to make provision for these children was a detailed survey of all
cases notified to the Health Department from any source and the compilation of a register
of all under 5 handicapped children from the health visitors' records. Dagenham has a
population of approximately eight thousand 0—4 year olds and our records have brought
to light eighty-five children, i.e. 1% in this group with a degree of handicap likely to
necessitate special schooling when the time comes.
The defects found in this group are many and varied and the degree to which a child
is handicapped by his defect varies (a) with the severity of the defect (e.g., no two epileptics
will show the same degree of disability), and (b) with the amount of care and attention
that can be given to him in the home (one epileptic can be well controlled on drugs and
good management while another, having less frequent fits, may be difficult to stabilize
in a poor and inadequate home background.)
It is also true that the ability of a child to overcome or to learn to adjust to his
handicap at an early age is of paramount importance in his later schooling and training,
and recent work in hospital departments has emphasized this necessity by training
schemes for mothers in the care of disabled children. Many of these children are, by
the nature of their defect, barred from the ordinary activities of toddlers and so are
compelled to live a solitary life within the home, and it is not until they are admitted to
special schools that they can belatedly attempt to adjust themselves to competition and
companionship.
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