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Mental Health Service.
The Occupation Centre for Mentally Defective Children and Adult
Female Patients, was opened on 8th September, 1953, at the Methodist
Church Hall, Bennett's Castle Lane, Becontree. It is known as the Ilford
Junior Occupation Centre.
There are 57 children on the register.
Full medical inspection is carried out once a year, by one of the School
Medical Officers, also a survey visit is made quarterly.
Child Guidance Clinic.—The Child Guidance Clinic was opened on
3rd January, 1949, at Loxford Hall, Loxford Lane. Ilford.
Dr. H. M. S. Davidson, the Consultant Psychiatrist, reports as follows: —
"This year has just seen the fulfilment of the long promised
alterations to the Clinic, giving us three additional rooms which is just
sufficient for our present needs if sessional workers adjust their time
carefully so as not to overlap each other, but we still need another
larger room for group treatment to allow the mothers to attend a group
at the same time as the children.
During this last year group therapy has been given to a number
of different groups of children and mothers which has incidentally
enabled us to take on a larger number of children at one time and
thereby to reduce the length of time on the waiting list. Many
children have become adjusted with group therapy alone and for others
it has served as an introduction to later individual treatment where
this was indicated. Though most of the mothers have had individual
interviews as well many of them acquired new insight more
readily through discussion of common problems with other mothers
in the group. The greatest difficulty in group work lies in the selection
of cases so that the impact of each child has a therapeutic effect on
his fellow members, but very little is known about the factors which
determine this. We hope to study this aspect more fully in the future.
Owing to shortage of staff and our long waiting list in the past
we tended to have referred to us only the more serious cases of long
duration. Many of these children were shortly due to leave school and
others had reached a stage of chronicity which made it impossible to
treat them adequately in the time available. I would like to stress the
value of early referral since the younger the child and the more recent
the symptoms the greater the hope of adequate adjustment. The belief
that a child will "grow out of it" if left alone or that parents should
be able to deal with behaviour problems on their own too often leads
to unnecessary delay. Referral of earlier cases might lead to a
temporary increase in our waiting list, but this would eventually be
offset by the reduction in time needed for treatment.
We feel it important to keep in touch with other workers in the
the same field and welcomed Dr. Cullington's suggestion that some of
the Barking Health Visitors should attend the Clinic once a month for
case conferences. When a Barking case is being considered the School
Medical Officer and Health Visitor concerned are invited to attend as
well as the regular Health Visitors. One of our Psychiatric Social
Workers takes part in a monthly conference on Problem Families with
other social agencies in Barking. A meeting was arranged with the
Medical Officer of the Dagenham area when the general working of
the Clinic and the types of cases most suitable for referral were discussed.
This year has seen many changes of staff. Mr. Pickett left at the
beginning of the year and Miss Wicks has taken his place as Educational
Psychologist; Miss Woods left to take up other work and Mrs.
Leegood took her place on the secretarial staff, and Dr. Altschulova