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67
CHILD GUIDANCE
(Report by Dr. Mary L. Gilchrist.)
From 1st September, 1947, an Educational Psychologist was
appointed by Essex County Council to work at the Walthamstow
Child Guidance Clinic and deal specially with children in the
Borough of Leyton and the Forest Division of the County.
This appointment should be of great value to the schools and
scholars of the Borough. For years it has been pointed out in
these Annual Reports that many children presented for statutory
medical examination because of educational failure were shown
to have average or above-average intelligence. In spite of that
knowledge it has rarely been possible to apply the necessary remedy,
and the children have had to struggle on as best they could. These
school failures were not always due to emotional or environmental
factors, but to some educational difficulty ; and it is this group
who should benefit specially from the help and advice of the educational
psychologist.
For two years now we have been greatly handicapped in
helping cases who required child guidance, as the special clinics
attached to London Hospitals, to which cases had been referred
previously, are now too busy with their own district cases.
After a great deal of delay, Essex County Council have appointed
an additional psychiatrist and psychiatric social worker ; and
Leyton children are now beginning to have the skilled psychiatric
attention they require.
The fruits of this work are, unfortunately, very slow in maturing
; and it will be some time before positive results can be expected.
It may be that we are now much more aware than we used to be of
" problem children," and therefore look for cases which at one time
we should not have considered as problems at all ; it may be the
upheaval of war and the underlying anxieties of modern urban life
have " thrown up " the unstable child as well as the unstable adult.
Certainly the number of difficult children and difficult home situations
appear to be greatly in excess of the number of fifteen years ago.
The assessment and treatment of these children add greatly
to the work at school clinics and ancillary services.
SPEECH THERAPY.
In January, 1947, one of the Council's two speech therapists
left to take up another appointment; and, as the vacancy was not