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situation will improve. Other children who need to be placed away
from home are those who go to boarding school, and here we are
fortunate in having help from County Hall, but there is a shortage of
places in schools for Maladjusted Children, particularly as the requirements
for recognition of such schools have recently been tightened
up.
There is practically no chance of placing older girls in schools
for Maladjusted Children, unless they come within the E.S.N, range.
There seem to have been an increasing number of adolescent girls
referred to this Clinic during the year. Some very intelligent and the
disturbance was largely concerned with the home — the Education
Department has been most helpful in arranging for admission of one
or two of them to ordinary boarding schools. If this works out it will
perhaps prove a very useful development for such children, the
parents are required to pay for this type of education and where they
are able to do this it helps them and the children to know that there
is a positive contribution from the home. This is likely to work best
with children who are not too disturbed in themselves, and may be
particularly beneficial at puberty which is a natural time for personality
re-adjustment.
We are sad that Mrs. Pym has moved from Ilford and so has
left the Day Maladjusted Classes which have continued to do invaluable
work throughout the year and catered for some extremely
disturbed children. We are, however, very lucky to have Mrs. McGrath
to take her place who is also a qualified teacher of Maladjusted
Children."
SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGICAL SERVICE.
Miss B. S. Gascoyne and Miss C. Helen Watt, Educational Psychologists,
report as follows:—
"During the year we held at the Child Guidance Clinic a series
of four discussions for teachers on the subject of emotionally disturbed
children; the meetings were open to Ilford and Barking teachers.
In order to focus the discussion on the practical situation which
faces the teacher, we gave as the title for our discussions "The
problem of dealing with emotionally disturbed children in class
teaching." Although we started by discussingthe class-room situation,
the discussions tended to develop in such a way that people stated
their views, in a rather theoretical and generalised fashion, about
the causes of emotional disturbance and we got rather far from the
class-room situation.