View report page

12
A.S. In May 1960 this six year old boy was admitted to the School
for Physically Handicapped Children with a history of recurrent
catarrhal bronchitis with broncho spasm, and nasal catarrh with
varying amounts of catarrhal deafness. During the same month he
was put on a course of breathing exercises and postural drainage.
He made a very gradual improvement at first, but this was main
tained and later he progressed so satisfactorily that by Easter
1962 he was able to return to ordinary school.
G.B. Born by Caesarian section at Thorpe Coombe in 1948 with
severe bilateral talipes equino varus this boy had both feet
splinted from two days old. When he started to walk he was
supplied with wedged shoes and special night splints. After
several manipulations as an out patient he was admitted to
hospital in 1952 for open elongation of the tendo achilles
followed by application of Plaster of Paris. He was transferred
to the Physiotherapy Clinic in 1953 when he was fitted with
surgical shoes and attended regularly for exercises. This type
of deformity is often most disappointing to treat because of the
risk of relapse due to the increasing deformity of bone structure
as the child grows. However, he made excellent progress the
mother was always most co operative, and made sure that the
exercises were carried out at home. In 1961 he was able to go
into normal shoes, and was finally discharged in September,1962.
PSYCHIATRIC SOCIAL WORK
Contributed by Miss A.M. Laquer, A.A.P S.W.
The Psychiatric Social Worker s influence on child health
and preventive mental health, we hope is considerable. Ours is
the case work approach that is, seeing and treating the family
as an entity rather than child guidance in a narrow meaning. We
are dealing with' the parents' difficulties and problems,
although they may see them only in the light of the children's
problems, more often than not the two are so closely connected
that one can hardly ever keep them entirely separate. The kind
of case work we are doing now has been practised fairly widely
for a number of years and great use is being made of the understanding
of the use of relationship between the social worker
and her or his clients.
The worker s aim is to make a relationship with the client,
and in the context of this relationship to discuss and work
through some of the clients' feelings and attitudes which are
affecting adversely inter familial relationships, and the
clients' ability to function comfortably as a person. These
feelings and attitudes have developed in the client in response
to his or her experience of life from earliest childhood.