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Child Guidance Service
The Borough is served by two Child Guidance Centres - at Lordship Lane, Tottenham, and at
Tetherdown, Hornsey. The Lordship Lane Centre is attended by Dr. Nina Meyer, consultant psychiatrist,
who acts as Medical Director. At the Tetherdown Centre, the consultant psychiatrist and Medical Director
is Dr. K.A. Graf.
Miss Gwen Kidgell is the Senior Educational Psychologist with overall responsibility for the
administration of the child guidance and school psychological service. The staff of the service also
includes three educational psychologists, two psychotherapists, three psychiatric social workers, two
social workers, and six clerical assistants who between them work equivalent hours to five full-time
officers.
Dr. Nina Meyer reports as follows on the work at Lordship Lane Centre:-
'The work of the Tottenham Child Guidance Clinic continues to expand. In the year 1st April 1966
to 31st March 1967, 161 cases were referred: five years ago, 86 cases were referred. It is, perhaps,
not surprising that there should be such an increase in a period when social change is rapid.
Problems which concern Haringey, in common with other urban areas, include changes in the school
structure, a large immigrant population (Greek Cypriot, Turkish Cypriot, Indian, Pakistani, and West
Indian) and overcrowding. These factors make serious contributions to disturbance in the child
population, exemplified by school phobia, or fear of going to school, an emotional withdrawal, which
has recently been described as a kind of autism, and delinquency. New answers are called for, since
individual treatment must of necessity be limited, and in many cases is not applicable. To send the
child away from his environment to a residential school often constitutes an additional burden on the
child's capacity for adjustment.
Child Guidance teams are therefore meeting new and challenging problems, for which new answers
must be found.
With this in view the team at Lordship Lane is increasing its contact with Probation Officers.
School Welfare Officers. Child Care Officers and Health Visitors. It is also proposed to have a series
of seminars with Health Visitors and Doctors, so that child disturbance can be detected in the earlier
stages, when help is most effective.
The Clinic for the Under Fives is part of this attempt to give help earlier. Here too numbers have
dramatically increased from 26 in 1961 to 60 in 1966/67. It is now proposed to have a clinic for Under
Two's, so that priority can be given at this phase of child development, when mothers are most concerned,
and involved, and for whom, therefore, help is most effective".
Dr. K.A. Graf reports as follows on the work at Tetherdown Clinic:-
"As requested. / have pleasure in giving you a brief report on the function and organisation of the
Tetherdown Child Guidance Clinic during the year 1966.
This is my fifth report since seconded by the North West Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board to
services as Consultant Psychiatrist in the area, and my second as Medical Director of the Tetherdown
Child Guidance Centre, which was established in its present set-up at the time of the reorganisation of
the London Boroughs. The changes of staff and administration which have resulted from this have been
described in detail in last year's report, and we enjoyed this year the benefits of a smoothly running
service without any particular highlights or new developments. This does not reflect inactivity but,
on the contrary, intensive preoccupation with diagnostic and therapeutic work with our clients. We have
continued to give advice and practical heIp by therapy and counselling to those who were concerned about
the mental health of their own and other people's children. It is one of the prime functions of the Clinic
to promote the happiness and to remove the psychological difficulties of the children and young people
referred for advice, and they and their parents can be assured that the members of the Clinic are treating
them with all modern therapeutic techniques available. The therapeutic methods employed and the whole
approach towards emotionally disturbed children who often present behaviour or educational problems differs
considerably from the adult psychiatric out-patient clinic because of the following characteristics in the
make-up of a child:-
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