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136
Spina bifida 1
Peroneal muscular atrophy 1
Cerebral Palsy 1
Removal of left eye 1
12
The 20 children discharged left for the following reasons:-
Fit for ordinary school 6
Left school (over age) 9
Removed from Area 3
Admission to alternative Special School 2
20
The number of children attending the school is a little lower
than last year. This is accounted for partly by the well-recognised
virtual disappearance of cases of malnutrition and largely by the
increasing tendency to keep children in ordinary schools if at all
possible, the result being that on the whole children in a school for
handicapped pupils are very much more severely handicapped than
in the past. For instance, there are at Benton several chair bound
children who in the old days could not have been placed anywhere.
All this, however, creates fresh difficulties, that of transport
being by far the greatest. Means of transport which are adequate for
ambulant or semi-ambulant children are quite unsuitable forcompletely
helpless and often very heavy ones. In fact, cases have occurred of
children unable to attend school because no suitable transport for
them could be found and because drivers and welfare workers cannot
and should not be expected to manhandle them. The same conditions
apply to an even greater extent to the children attending the Cerebral
Palsy Unit.
I suggest that the only feasible solution is to provide a special
vehicle fitted with a ramp and a hydraulic hoist. It could be used by
both schools even before they join up on the Barley Lane site as we
hope they will do in the autumn of 1963.
The work of the school has continued to go smoothly as in
previous years and from that angle there is nothing fresh to report,