Care Committees in M.D. Schools
Dear Editor,
I expect your readers are familiar with the London Children’s Care system, which seeks to mitigate for the children the various ills attendant on poverty, overcrowding, etc. But there is one section of the youthful population which is of especial interest to readers of your Journal?the children who attend the Special Schools for the Mentally Defective. There is no arbitrary dividing line between the normal and the defective children who are on the rolls of the Special Schools. Many of the latter come from the poorest strata of society, and adverse home conditions, poor food and lack of encouragement to learn, make a background which tends to retard their progress. If the environment were more stimulating, it is at least arguable that they might be able to take their place normally in the elementary school.
Care Committee work in a Special School gives opportunities to the voluntary worker to endeavour to adjust the home environment, or to make up in other ways for the deprivations which arrest the child’s development. Unaided, they tend to become the inefficient and unskilled, who are rarely in regular employment, and who become a charge on the community.
May I appeal to any of your readers with some leisure to spare, to interest themselves in this branch of social work? Much useful work can be accomplished even in one day a week. I am myself working in a school of this type in the East End of London, and know how much remains to be done. I will gladly give more details of the work involved to anyone to whom it appeals.
Yours faithfully, M. MYERS (Mrs.) The Glebe, Hadley Common, nr. Barnet, Herts. We commend this appeal to the attention of our readers.?Ed.
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