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119
the Tottenham head teachers with the Borough Education Officer in
the chair, and the entire Child Guidance Team present Each
member of the team described his work Questions had been sub
mitted in advance and copies distributed to the members of the
Child Guidance Team in order to give them an idea of the scope of
the information required and the kind of problems that needed to
be met and to the head teachers for information and reference
during the meeting A very large number of questions were sent
in and these were dealt with for the most part Since then there
has been a marked improvement in the co-operation with the Child
Guidance Team and a very much greater ease of access and inter
change of information and ideas
It is necessary to add that the subject which I raise each
year namely the extent of psychological illness among school
children is still hardly appreciated The recent Report on
Maladjusted Children suggested this as possibly 80 per 1,000 which
would mean that there are over 2 000 children in the two Boroughs
who are appreciably disturbed It would be appropriate that the
next stage of the development of the School Health Service which
has its 50th anniversary this year should be concerned with
extending the scope of the psychiatric services Regrettably
this is not generally appreciated It must be said in extenuation
that psychiatric understanding of children and particularly
infants„ derives largely from the most recent discoveries and
observations of psycho analysis and there must necessarily be a
lag between possession of such psychological knowledge by a few
highly trained persons and the general understanding by the large
mass of people concerned with child development.
It is however, particularly exciting to find that the know
ledge is in existence and to know what the next stage must be so
that it is possible to make plans to get on with the job
An increase in the number of psychiatric sessions and in the
staffing of the Child Guidance Team was requested earlier and has
already resulted in an extra educational psychologist being
appointed in Tottenham, and there is a possibility of extra
psychiatric sessions being arranged there The appointment of a
full-time child psychotherapist (or part time equivalents) has
also been approved Here again the question of assessment of the
needs of the Child Guidance Team at Hornsey and its staffing in
relation to the amount of emotional ill health among school
children in the Borough, could be something which needs further
consideration.