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123
SPEECH CLINICS.
Mrs. M. Walker, the Senior Speech Therapist, reports
on the work of the Speech Clinics during 1961 as follows:-
Mrs. Tingey Six Sessions Mayesbrook and
per week. schools.
Mrs. Pretious Full-time. Cerebral Palsy Unit
school clinics and
schools.
Mrs. Walker Full-time. Valentines Clinic
and schools.
"Again more children under school age have
been seen and this has paid dividends in the form of
preventive treatments and a younger age at discharge ,
although this does not necessarily mean a shorter
over-all period of treatment. These children rarely
devdop the deep seated emotional problems and feelings
of social inadequacy which are already strongly established
in most of the children who are referred at a
later age.
Older patients, mainly those suffering from
stammer, tend to take up more and more treatment
sessions over a very long term, so that from everyone's
point of view the plea is still "the earlier the
better". We make it a principle that a child should
be placed on the waiting list as soon as the mother
expresses anxiety about his speech, or his behaviour
in 'speech situations'.
Therapists have continued to work full sessions
in those schools which have a large enouth number
of speech defective children to warrant this.
In the pastwe have praised the advantages of
this in the resulting better attendances. The disadvantages,
however, have gradually revealed themselves
as being almost disproportionately large. The
lack of the all-important contact with parents has
previously been touched upon; added to this is the
tendency of treatment sessions to become grossly
overcrowded, to the detriment of therapists and
patients. (There seems to be a pressing obligation