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Medicine will hold a six weeks course in child health designed to
give a comprehensive training in developmental paediatrics to
experienced doctors in the maternity and child welfare and school
health services. This indicates that the doctors are keen to
prepare themselves to meet a new challenge the early diagnosis
of congenital abnormalities and the co-ordination of medical care
and supporting services for children suffering from handicapping
conditions of all kinds. These doctors require a deep understanding
of the psychiatry of childhood and of preventive psychiatry; of the
causes of congenital abnormalities and be highly trained in screening
techniques and developmental diagnosis.
Keep them Fit.
Our attitude towards the handicapped child and the older
person has undergone a profound change during this last decade. To
place a child or an old person in an institution for long term care
should be the final solution offered to relatives rather than the
first one. Instead every effort should be made to enable either a
child or an older person to remain as long as possible with the
family and as independent as possible; by providing day care, or
short term care which can relieve relatives of strain; and to take
advantage of group technique applicable to both types of patient.
We have come to realise that the ante-natal and obstetric services
which have largely gone from the local authorities are more than
ever important in the prevention of childhood and permanent
disability both mental and physical.
Research
We are following the advice of the Ministry of Health in
organising schemes for the notification by maternity hospital and
domiciliary midwives of adverse factors occurring in pregnancy,
labour, and the puerperium which might place the baby at risk of
developing a handicap and we are building up these “at risk”
registers. Eventually we should have a comprehensive knowledge of all
the handicapped children in our area and still more important be in
a position to indicate possible lines of research.
Attachments.
We are being told even by such an eminent body as the Working
Party on General Practice that attachment of health visitors to
general practitioners will improve our remedies for medico-social
care, protection, and prevention. At a medical conference recently
I heard Dr.John Pry tell the audience that practitioners as a group
had neither the time, facilities, nor experience to do screening
and preventive work in the fields of infant welfare, school health,
or older people. If it requires special training for our own medical
officers who have already had years of experience, how much more so
for those doctors who have never worked in this field. There has
been no research as yet to find out the most effective method of
using our health visiting and other ancillary services; such a
measure is urgently necessary before we accept ex-cathedra
pronouncements. The essential difference is this: the practitioner;
traditionally waits for a sick person to ask for his attention;
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