[Report 1960] / School Medical Officer of Health, Huddersfield County Borough.

  • Huddersfield (England). County Borough Council.
Date:
1960
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1960] / School Medical Officer of Health, Huddersfield County Borough. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    CHILD GUIDANCE CLINIC. This year the clinic was suffering from shortage of staff. The post of the Educational Psychologist could not be filled before the 1st August, when Mr. K. T. Pickup started his present appointment. In September Miss R. E. Reynolds left Huddersfield to take up the Mental Health Course at the London School of Economics. She had worked at the Child Guidance Clinic for three years and we were sorry to lose her good services ; we are wishing her much success for the Course and her future career. It was impossible to fill her post with a Psychiatric Social Worker, and we were very grateful indeed to the Health Department for their suggestion that Miss PorritL the Senior Health Visitor might help us out in the capacity of Social Worker with 5 sessions weekly. She took over the greater part of the social work of the Clinic on the 1st October, and has become a very valuable member of the staff. In spite of the staffing difficulties the waiting list has not increased, and the number of children seen by the Psychiatrist has slightly increased this year. In the absence of an Educational Psychologist from January to August, the remedial reading groups were supervised by the Senior Remedial Teacher. These classes for backward readers have continued throughout the year, with some 70 children on roll. Special equipment for testing the intelligence of pre-school children, and materials for teaching basic number concepts to children backward in arithmetic, has been obtained. A number of books for backward readers have been obtained via the Deputy Librarian, and are available for borrowing by members of the remedial reading classes. Most of the schools in the Authority have been visited, and children have been interviewed and tested in the schools. A lecture entitled ‘ Understanding your Child ’ was given at the first meeting of the Salendine Nook Secondary Modern School Parent/Teacher Association. We were happy to help a post-graduate student from Cambridge University with an investigation he was conducting into delayed educational maturation or 1 late development,’ and to introduce a student from Manchester Training College to the problems of children’s maladjustment. In February, 1960, the Psychiatrist read a paper on Psychiatric Treatment of Children at a meeting of the Leeds Psychiatric Association in Bradford. The Psychiatrist and the former Social Worker attended the Annual Inter-Clinic Conference of the National Association of Mental Health in London in April, 1960. During the year the waiting-room was tastefully redecorated, and we were looking forward to the redecoration of most of the rooms, which was, to our great satisfaction, completed in January, 1961.