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45
The hospital was situated on the borders of Epping Forest,
and was administered as a voluntary hospital.
The orthopaedic hospital continued until the outbreak of war
in 1939, when circumstances combined to bring about closure.
The physically defective school was transferred from the Joseph
Barrett School to the newly erected open-air school at Hale End
on the 21st September, 1936. At the same time the ground floor
rooms of Hale End House were adapted to provide a suite of 3
rooms (including a large treatment room), as a physiotherapy clinic
for the Borough.
With the closure of the Brookfield Hospital, Miss Garratt,
one of the previous part-time physiotherapists, gave her whole time
to the work of the physiotherapy clinic at the Hale End School.
This arrangement has proved ideal, i.e., the location of the orthopaedic
and the physiotherapy clinics at the Open-Air School where
all the phvsically defective children in the Borough requiring nonresidential
special education are treated and accommodated.
The four special schools provide reasonably adequate facilities
for handicapped children in the Borough requiring non-residential
special educational treatment. The position now, however, is complicated
by requests from the adjoining Forest Division to admit
their handicapped children following from the rapid influx of such
children from London County Council rehousing in Essex.
With the removal, of the William Morris School for the Deaf
to the Hale End site three of the special schools are now accommodated
at Hale End, i.e., the School for the Physically Handicapped,
the Educationally Sub-normal and for the Deaf and the
Partially Deaf. The School for the Blind and Partially Sighted
remains nearby at the Wood Street premises.
The School for the Physically Handicapped and for Delicate
Children was inspected by the officers of the Ministry of Education
in 1949, and it is of interest to find that practically every suggestion
made in Chapter XIII of "The Health of the School Child" for
1950/51 has been in operation. The one exception is the follow-up
of children six to twelve months after discharge from the School
and this, it is hoped, will be remedied during 1953.
The various facilities at Hale End seem worthy of summary—
the monthly orthopaedic clinic is held here; a whole-time physiotherapist
has a large treatment room available with adequate
apparatus including a mercury vapour sun lamp; a medical session
is held once a week and the school nurse visits occasionally as
required since there is a welfare assistant available with some
nursing experience; the Consultant Paediatrician visits; one of
the Speech Therapy Clinics is located here; there are facilities for
bathing and for shower baths; an up-to-date prefabricated kitchen
and dining room is available; the school opens during the summer