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15.
In furtherance of this all the Medical Staff have
attended a short in-service training course on Mental
Health arranged by the Central Council for Health Education
on behalf of the Essex County Council and have, in addition,
attended a number of meetings with the psychiatrists at the
Child Guidance Clinic to discuss methods of diagnosis and
treatment.
These meetings continue to be most profitable and it
is hoped to take advantage of any further short courses
which may be arranged, some of which have already been
attended by members of the Health Visiting staff.
It is within the schools themselves, however, that the
greatest opportunity occurs for help to be given to
children handicapped by mental and emotional defects. Apart
from the Margaret Brearley School where the specially
trained staff and small classes are able to contain, and to
produce some excellent results in, children too backward or
too disturbed to attend a normal school the Remedial
Special Classes at Blackhorse Junior School, at Mission
Grove and Woodside, are proving their worth as a method of
educating (in the true sense of bringing out) less
severely affected children who have failed in normal
schools, often because of excessive timidity and
inhibition, children for these classes are carefully
selected on the advice of the Educational Psychologist.
Miss E. M. Smith, and often show two or three years'
advance in a single year. The teachers in these classes
and at the Margaret Brearley Special School show, to an
exceptional degree a sense of vocation and it is
impossible to compute the final benefit to these children
of being encouraged and guided to achieve instead of
being left to develop an increasing sense of failure and
frustration in their efforts to keep up with an ordinary
class. The expenditure in space and manpower of these
small classes will, I believe, prove to be a most
profitable investment in reducing the number of potential
misfits and delinquents.
It is said that the proper way to grow asparagus is
to go out three years ago to prepare the bed and the same
is true of the prevention and treatment of maladjustment
in children. Dr. Gillespie is anxious to see and treat
disturbed children whenever possible before their fifth
birthday and toddlers clinics are held at which the