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all the schools affected are within the Ilford School Psychological
Service. The children who are referred from these schools for psychiatric
investigation are still being seen at Walthamstow Child
Guidance Clinic, but in April the whole Redbridge area will come
under the present Ilford Child Guidance Clinic. We feel that working
out the transfer of the area in stages is proving very valuable
because there should not be any hiatus in April. The appointment in
August of a psychologist for Dagenham who took over that area from
Miss Gascoyne made it possible for her to work full-time in the
Redbridge area.
In August, Miss Ballantine was appointed as a full-time
remedial teacher based on the Child Guidance Clinic. She sees
children individually for regular hourly sessions. We are finding her
services particularly useful because it enables the mothers to be
seen at the same time by the psychiatric social workers. This close
contact between teacher and social worker is invaluable especially
in helping children whose learning difficulties are bound up with
emotional problems. These children can often be helped by this
extra individual teaching and support while remaining in ordinary
schools. Some attend for a period of observation to see whether they
will be able to respond to this type of help. Some cases are taken on
direct from the schools without full referral to the Child Guidance
Clinic. We find this service very useful for observation or assessment
of the educational difficulties. Some of the children are likely
to be able to catch up fairly quickly in ordinary schools with this
small amount of extra help. In some cases this prevents them getting
so far behind that they later need full time placement in remedial
classes. It also caters for children who have fallen behind in one
aspect of school work but are not showing the all round educational
retardation which requires more intensive remedial help.
During the year more and more attention has been drawn in the
national press to the plight and special needs of autistic children.
We have been well aware of this problem for some time and have
tried to make provision for them within the area by considering in
each case which of the available educational facilities could be of
most help to the child in question and placing the child accordingly.
We have come to the conclusion that such children need a different
method of teaching from most other disturbed children so we are
making plans for establishing a teaching unit geared to their needs
and we hope that a building is going to be available for this purpose."