[Report 1964] / School Medical Officer of Health, Caernarvonshire County Council.

  • Caernarvonshire (Wales). County Council.
Date:
1964
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1964] / School Medical Officer of Health, Caernarvonshire County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    First interviews occupy ca. 1J hours, most interviews with either parents or children ca. j hours each. Weekly case discussions were held at our central clinic in Old Colwyn and less regularly at peripheral clinics. At these we were frequently joined by colleagues from allied fields and by students from universities and colleges A number of students spent from 1 to 4 weeks with us working at clinics. Liaison work in general was given a great deal of attention. Many of the children and parents whom we see in consultation or for diagnostic or therapeutic purposes are also known to workers in one or more of the other community services and may be actively supported by them. A constant effort is then required to ensure that available knowledge and resources are put to their best possible use. It is not always easy to know the exact nature and extent of difficulties met by others, to discover how best we might be of assistance, to match our approach to the working methods of others. Fortunately we are all conscious of these “problems of communi- cation” and try to overcome them when we meet on formal occasions and, perhaps best, informally during discussions on individual cases. Extensive contacts with teachers and Education Officers and their staffs have been maintained, mainly through the psychologists. Very active co-operation continued also with the School Medical Officers and the staffs of their departments in all counties. The Education Authorities of the five North Wales counties who have participated in the service for many years now and of Montgomeryshire after extensive discussions and with the full support of the Hospital Man- agement Committee, decided to increase the establishment of Educational Psychologists from the existing two to five, as from April 1965, and to include Montgomeryshire in the provisions made. The new appointees will be seconded to the Service to work under the overall direction of the Principal Psychologist as do the Hospital Management Committee’s Clinical Psychologists. Together with other members of staff they will function as full members of teams in agreed parts of the area. A considerable ex- pansion of the school psychological services in particular is envisaged, and this will be backed by the full resources of the service as a whole. Gwynfa, our residential clinic at Colwyn Bay, forms an important part of the general facilities of our clinics. The establishment is staffed and financed by the Hospital Management Committee on behalf of the Welsh Hospital Board and functions as an integral part of the Child Guidance Clinic Service. There is accommodation for 20 children, to be increased possibly to 25. Boys and girls aged preferably under 12 are admitted for full investigation and treatment as may be necessary. Children who require very long term care, those who need training rather than treatment, and those who show grossly disordered behaviour, are unsuitable for admission. The former would soon block the beds urgently needed by those likely to benefit from active and relatively short term treatment, and the latter would require a degree of supervision and restriction which is generally held to be undesirable for the children for whose treatment Gwynfa is primarily intended.