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During 1966 two Asian immigrant children were found to have active
tuberculosis, and since 1960 a total of five.
The position regarding educational subnormality in immigrant children is not
clear cut. The percentage of educationally sub-normal children in the Borough as a
whole is 0.7% and the percentage in Asian children is estimated as 0.4%. It is difficult
to draw valid conclusions from these figures since it is possible that they are not
referred for special education on account of their language difficulty but are retained
in normal schools for instruction in the English language. It may well be that
difficulty in distinguishing between language difficulty and backwardness results in
a longer period of normal school being necessary before the two are differentiated.
If there is uncertainty on this point, it is the practice in Ealing schools to give Asians
the benefit of the doubt.
In contrast, West Indian children have more than double the average percentage
of educationally sub-normal pupils. The situation here, however, is different in that
although they are English speaking, they have not had the same educational facilities
in their country of origin.
There is little evidence of any major psychiatric problem in the immigrant
children, but there is, however, an unhappy tendency towards the isolation of the nonEnglish
speaking mother from her family. The father and children eventually learn to
speak English but the mother may not, particularly if she does not go out to work. In
the long term this could be an undesirable trend as the mother may eventually be cut
off from the school and unable to take part in any decisions made about her child.
DENTAL HEALTH
The pattern of dental disease in the children is not dissimilar from that of
European children. Indeed, overall, they seem to have rather less caries, probably
because their diet contains a lower proportion of sugar. There is a need for
improvement however in the standard of oral hygiene.
The immigrant mothers offer a rather different clinical picture from the same
group of young English women. Whilst a large number of the immigrants are cariesfree
because of their rather different dietetic habits, paradontal disease of an
advanced nature and its precursor, salivary calculus, are a common occurrence. This
all too often leads to premature teeth loss. It is of interest that the number of
immigrant mothers referred to the Southall dental clinics by general medical
practitioners is a much higher proportion than in any other part of the Borough.
Orthodontic treatment for immigrant children presents certain unusual aspects.
Firstly, as always, communication is difficult and it is a problem to make the parent
understand what is involved. Parents often willingly give their consent to orthodontic
treatment but it is only later that it becomes obvious that they have really failed to
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