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and so that they may learn to mix with other children and be ready for the type of special
schooling most suited to their handicap when the time comes.
Handicapped school leavers, on the other hand, require a different orientation on
the part of the school medical officers from the school child or pre-school child. For
these children the question of paramount importance is how they will fit into the pattern
of local employment, a pattern which varies greatly throughout the country with 100
years has meant that there is less unskilled labour and it is now less easy to find a niche
for the mentally or physically handicapped in highly organised industry where the work
of the whole depends on the continuity and speed of the work of each.
In many areas the only contact the School Health Department has with local industry
is the completion of Ministry of Labour Form Y9. This form is not sufficiendy informative
because it is not a medical referral form as it should be between doctor and
doctor and is therefore stultified, relating only to what the child cannot do. The school
medical officers know little about local industry though a lot about the child's capabilities
within the educational system in which they have observed the child for ten or more years.
There is, therefore, no one suitably trained or knowledgeable enough to whom the youth
employment officer can say, " Can this boy do such and such a job ? "
In this area we are fortunate to have two or three large factories with industrial
medical officers who assess the school leavers in the light of the vacant job, knowing what
that job involves. However, these large factories are mainly heavy industry with a
conveyor belt system and cannot easily assimilate handicapped young adults and cannot
or will not afford to have slower paced workers. It is in the smaller factories of light
industry that the children are most easily and happily placed but where there is little or
no medical supervision.
Here it is important to differentiate between the physically handicapped and the
educationally subnormal school leaver. Frequently, we have found that the educationally
subnormal school leavers are socially more mature than the Secondary Modern
school leaver because of the greater emphasis placed on social adaptation in the special
schools, but they are emotionally immature and will more easily break down under the
stress of employment and mixing with the stronger willed teenagers in modern industry.
They miss the sheltered atmosphere of the special schools and frequently feel misfits in
the pattern of employment for the first two years until their emotional maturity has caught
up with the social adjustment, and they have learnt to hide or cover their defective
educational attainments or reached an age or found a job where these are no longer of
importance.
The aim of the training the child receives at school should be to fit him for life
outside and not only to educate him in the narrower sense of the academic and scholastic
field. Unfortunately, too many of the special schools tend to give too little attention
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