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The following extract from the Annual Report of the
Child Guidance Council describes the methods of investigation.
" The methods employed are simple and straightforward,
and have stood the test of time and of critical
examination. The general principle is to use the simplest
possible procedure which will attain the desired results.
The psycho-analytical method is not applied. In certain
cases, simple advice is all that is required ; as when the
parent or teacher is in doubt on some point of management,
or when, as sometimes happens, there is some physical
cause, and the means of obtaining appropriate treatment
can be indicated.
Often there is need for special teaching to overcome a
peculiar difficulty in learning. Many clinics are able to
supply this by giving individual tuition, or teaching in
small groups. Where the case is more involved, and the
relations between the child and his family have become
strained and unhappy, or the child himself is becoming
neurotic, treatment is much less simple. The complications
in the home must be unravelled bit by bit, and
the child's neurosis must be treated.
No extravagant claims are made for the results of
the work in Child Guidance Clinics, but the case work is,
actually, very successful and compares most favourably
with that in any other branch of medicine. Careful
demonstration of the results which can be obtained in
clinic work has won the confidence of those who have had
sufficient opportunities of judging them, and a growing
realisation of the need for expert effort to prevent nervous
disease and mal-adjustments of personality has hastened
the demand for such service."
During recent years members of your School Medical Staff
have availed themselves of the facilities at the London Child
Guidance Clinic, Canonbury; and the excellent reports
received from the staff of that clinic have been most useful in
dealing with individual difficult cases.
The London Child Guidance Clinic, one of the pioneer
clinics of its kind in the country, is a voluntary organisation
which depends on the raising of voluntary funds. If that