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TODDLERS' PLAY SESSIONS
A pilot scheme of Toddlers' Play Sessions has been operating in Leyton for several
months, and the scheme will be extended, still in an experimental phase during 1962.
The local health authority's child health services were originally designed to
prevent physical ill-health and in their development they have played an enormous part
in reducing the morbidity and mortality in childhood. This preventive work must continue,
but preventive medicine must also be constantly assessing the nature of community health
and disease.
The major community health problem in this country today is mental ill-health and
we have, therefore, a clear duty to re-orientate our health services to meet this
community need.
It is generally accepted that the foundations for neurotic illnesses are often
laid in childhood, when a child's genetically determined mental inheritance is moulded
by his family emotional environment.
A family in which there are emotional tensions may adversely affect the developing
emotional stability of the young child.
Our teams of medical officers and health visitors recognise families in which
these emotional problems exist and try to help, relieve or resolve the families'
difficulties.
The toddlers' play sessions are designed to provide a therapeutic and preventive
tool for the clinic teams; for example a young mother and toddler perhaps living in an
appartment or a flat, without play space for the toddler and no relatives nearby, are
in a potentially stressful situation which can react adversely on the emotional
stability of the family.
In this type of situation some relief to the family by the toddler coming to a
play session before emotional tensions have arisen is a preventive mental health service.
When tensions have already arisen which have resulted in some emotional disturbance
in the toddler, attendance at the play sessions is therapeutic and by resolving
these early emotional tensions prevents more serious disturbances in the future.
The Pilot Scheme
The sessions began on 22nd February, 1961, and consisted of one session; per week
held at Granleigh Road Clinic on Wednesday mornings from 9.30 a.m. to 12 noon and
staffed by the Warden and a senior nursery nurse from Ellingham Road Day Nursery under
the supervision of the nursery matron.
All the toddlers attending the group have been selected on medico-social grounds
by the Park House Clinic team and during 1961 thirty-seven toddlers have attended. The
average sessional attendance is ten and there is already a waiting list of thirtyeight
whom it is felt would benefit from attendance at these play sessions.
Experience so far indicates that these sessions may provide a valuable additional
therapeutic and preventive mental health measure to the maternal and child health
services, particularly when organised on a clinic team basis as in Leyton.
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