News and Notes
PMC5109161 Resignation of Miss Luce.
The C.A.M.D. has regretfully to record the resignation of Miss Luce on her appointment to an Inspectorship under the Board of Education. She has been for four years Organising Secretary of the Association and took an active part in the organisation of the six Short Courses for Teachers which have been held during that period, whilst in addition she has been responsible for editing this magazine from its inception.
Her work throughout has been marked by its enthusiasm and devotion and she will be very greatly missed, not only by the C.A.M.D., but also by the many Secretaries of Local Associations who have received her help and encouragement. Board of Control.
On the recommendation of the Minister of Health, the King has been pleased to appoint Miss Ruth Darwin to be a Commissioner (unpaid) of the Board of Control.
His Majesty on the recommendation of the Minister of Health has appointed Sir F. J. Willis, K.B.E., a principal assistant secretary in the Ministry of Health to be a Commissioner on the Board of Control, and the Minister of Health has appointed Sir F. Willis to be Chairman of the Board in succession to Sir William Byrne.
We refer to Sir William Byrne’s retirement in another column. A Circular was sent by the Board of Control to Local Authorities on April 12th, 1921, on the subject of the Restriction of Public Expenditure. It states that the Ministry of Health has issued instructions for the programmes of Local Authorities to be restricted to the execution of commitments already made and to the ultilisation of accommodation already available.
The Circu ar points out that it is open to Local Authorities to apply for the approval of additional Poor Law Institutions under Section 37 where necessary, but no fresh schemes for the establishment of Certified Institutions by Local Authorities can be considered.
In a separate paragraph the Circular draws attention to the fact that the duties of ascertainment and supervision, which are important but comparatively inexpensive, can still be carried out.
Short Course for Teachers.
The Tenth Short Course, arranged by the C.A.M.D. on behalf of the Board of Education, for Teachers of the Mentally Defective is now (July 6th to 27th) in progress at Leeds and is being attended by forty-two teachers from all parts of the country.
The Course is fol owing the usual lines, the students’ time being divided between Lectures (pedagogical, medical and legal), School Visits, Manual Classes and Classes in Physical Exercises. Advanced students are in addition attending Demonstrations given at the Leeds Special Schools by Dr. Wear, School Medical Officer, and Dr. Stockwell, Assistant School Medical Officer: and at Mean wood Park Colony by Dr. Middlemiss, Medical Officer to the Leeds Mental Deficiency Act Committee.
University of London. Post Graduate Course in Mental Deficiency.
The third Post Graduate Course arranged by the University Extension Board in co-operation with the C.A.M.D. was held at the University from May 23rd to June 4th, 1921. Two factors, the enforced restriction of expenditure on the part of Local Authorities, and the troubled industrial condition of the country which made it impossible for many Medical Officers to leave their counties at the time of the Course, combined to make the attendance much smaller than at the 1920 Courses. Twenty-five students attended, the majority being School Medical Officers. Two students took the Course as part of their examination for the new Diploma in Psychological Medicine of the University of London.
The syllabus was based on the requirements of the Diploma. Lectures were given by Dr. Tredgold, Dr. F. C. Shrubsall, Mr. Cyril Burt, Dr. E. Prideaux, Dr. W. C. Sullivan and Miss Lucy Fildes. Every student attended demon- strations of individual cases of defect; visits were paid to Special Schools under the London County Council and the Willesden Education Committee; whole day visits were made to Darenth Industrial Colony, Farmfield State Institution and the Royal Eastern Counties Institution, Colchester. Half day visits were also arranged, for those students who desired them, to smaller homes and schools in and near London, and to Lingfield Epileptic Colony. New features of this Course were a demonstration of anatomical specimens at the Royal College of Surgeons, and a clinical demonstration of various types and grades of defect at the Foun- tains Mental Hospital for Imbecile Children.
Wolf Cub and Brownie Packs for Backward Children.
The Secretary of the Cambs. Voluntary Association (Miss St. C. Townsend) sends us the following account of this new development of their work:? In October, 1920, the Cambs. Voluntary Association inaugurated a Wolf Cub Pack for the boys attending the Hope Class for backward children. There are over 40 children in this class, of all ages from 7 to 14, and of varying degrees of defect, from the merely dull and backward to low grade feebleminded, all of whom are visited by the Association.
In February, 1921, a Brownie Pack was started for the girls.
The boys have been divided into senior and junior groups, but the girls being fewer in number are taken in one group. Each group meets once a week, half an hour before school closes, in a large empty room opposite the school. In addition to this it has been possible to arrange for the boys to play football and other games in competition with other Packs in the town.
The Association have been fortune in enlisting the help of several keen workers, residents of Cambridge, and also that of a number of Newnham students during term time. This means that beyond the organising and general direction of the Packs, the Secretary of the Association need give very little time to the practical work.
From the beginning, the Borough Education Committee have been in sym- pathy with the experiment. They are convinced of its educational value to the children, and have now included the Cub and Brownie work in the school curriculum under “Organised games” and have agreed to assist in the matter of equipment.
Uniforms are kept at the school, but the children are encouraged to pay small sums weekly towards their own uniform, and as each article is paid for they are allowed to take it home.
The exper’ment had been an unqualified success: a marked improvement is noticeable in the children,?who begin to learn something of the meaning of “free discipline”?an exceptionally friendly relationship is established between the parents and the visitor, and an intimate knowledge is gained of the child’s character and capacity, and of his home surroundings. Yorkshire Association.
An arrangement for friendly co-operation with the Education Committee has recently been made by the Yorkshire Association. For some time past the Assoc ation has been trying to make the supervision of defective children leaving Special Schools more complete.
The extension of the Special Schools in York brought the question of an After Care Committee before the Educational Committee and a meeting was held in January consisting of visitors of the Special School, School Medical Officer, teachers, etc.
The Secretary of the Association attended this meeting and urged the im- portance of close co-operation between the suggested After Care Committee and the already existing Supervision Committee of the Association.
After much discussion it was decided not to form a separate After Care Committee but to ask the Supervision Committee to extend its borders so as to include those persons who would have formed an After Care Committee.
This has now been done and 11 new members have been added to the old Supervision Committee.
A complete list of all the children who have left the Special School since 1914 has been handed to the Association. Out of a list of 65 children only 11 have already been notified. The rest have been visited; 27 have moved and cannot be traced; of the remaining 27, 17 boys were in satisfactory work which many have kept for long periods, one boy earning as much as 35s. per week; 10 were out of work and these 10 will be specially visited and reported on.
The reception of the visitor was in all cases most cordial and the parent almost without exception loud in their praise of the work of the Special School. It is hoped that those 10 boys who were out of work may be dealt with possibly in an Occupation Centre, or some possibly may prove to be Institution cases.
Hitherto the York Education Committee has only provided for the Education of defective boys but provision has recently been made also for girls, and we con- fidently hope that these new arrangements will secure within a few years a com- plete survey of mental deficiency in the city.
Supervision of Mental Defectives in County Durham.
We have received the following from Miss H. S. Cooper Hodgson, Super- intendent Health Visitor, Durham County Council:?
In County Durham the health visitors supervise mental defectives in their homes. In a county area it is not possible to have day schools for such cases and institutional accommodation is at present unavailable, which means that many mental defectives are left in their homes, very little in the way of brightening their lives being possible. Several members of the health visitors’ staff have taken short courses of training in the care of mental defectives kindly arranged for them by Miss Evelyn Fox (C.A.M.D.), and it is hoped eventually to detail one of the health visitors to act as peripatetic teacher in addition to the usual routine supervision visits by the district health visitor. Much could be done by this means to render the defective’s life less happy, and, no mean achievement, to enable his parents or relatives to bear more cheerfully the affliction laid upon them. The training apparatus invented by Miss Macdowall and demonstrated by Miss JLuce has been copied by the health visitors and placed in the County Travel- ling Welfare Exhibition; it has excited much interest amongst all classes of the community. On more than one occasion a depressed looking woman has been noticed taking special interest in the exhibit and tactful questioning has elicited the fact that she had a mental defective in her family circle for whom she thought the ‘ ‘toys” would be such a Godsend. ‘ ‘It do seem so sad to see her sit there day after day with nothing to do.”
An astonishing number of people have asked “But what has mental defi- ciency to do with child welfare work.’’ The truth is, as every experienced health worker knows, that the two branches of work overlap in many ways, and are closely linked up with each other. We do not at present known how many of our mental defectives we owe to head injuries at birth, due to unskilful midwifery, but we are only too well aware of the number of babies we lose owing to the mental inefficiency of their mothers.
New Institution.
The Lancashire Asylums Board’s Asylum at “Calderstones,” Whalley, has recently been certified as an Institution for Mental Defectives. Built as an Asylum for the insane, and completed in 1915, it was never occupied as such, but was handed over to the War Office to be used as a hospital for soldiers. It was known during the war as Queen Mary’s Military Hospital and a total of 56,800 soldiers received treatment there.
Since June of last year this Institution has been standing empty, and for the last six months the War Office have been considering the bill presented by the Lancashire Asylums Board for re-instatement work and depreciation of property generally, before handing it over to the Local Authority.
It is hoped to open this Institution at an early date for the accommodation of 2,100 patients of both sexes and all grades.
Report on Occupation Centres in Somerset.
The Somerset Association for the Care of the Mentally Defective, after making careful investigations as to the needs of the defective children living in their own homes, decided to establish Occupation Centres in the more populous districts.
A start was made at Weston-super-Mare, and a Centre was opened on the 23rd November, 1D20. To begin with, meetings were arranged for three mornings a week, but this was soon extended to three full days. The number of children on the books is ten, and the average attendance is nine. In addition, two delicate children are given the opportunity of attending in the afternoons, and two paralysed children are given remedial exercises and training at other times.
The numbers are gradually increasing as the work becomes better known. The chief aims of the Centre are happiness and forgetfulness of limitations, and teaching of self-control, developing initiative, arousing interest and enthusi- asm. By means of varied games, singing and physical culture, the imagination and the memory are trained. The afternoons are principally devoted to hand- work, e.g., bead-threading, bead-making, raffia work, knitting, basket-making, and rough woodwork. The children have been taken to the sands on a few fine afternoons.
The cost of the Centre for rent, cleaning and heating is approximately ?25 per annum, and to this must be added the salary of the assistant and the cost of materials.
A second Centre was started in Glastonbury on the 1st March, 1921, with a full attendance of nine boys and girls of ages varying from seven to fourteen. In addition, a Mongolian imbecile lad of 21 attends in the afternoon for handwork. The children at this Centre are not so low grade as those at Weston-super-Mare, and some of them would undoubtedly benefit from instruction in a special class. The work carried on and the objects aimed at are the same as at the other Centre. It is opened two whole days a week, but this is not sufficient to satisfy the parents and children.
The cost of this Centre for rent, cleaning and heating is approximately ?17 per annum, and in addition there must be reckoned travelling expenses. To carry on the work of the Centres the Association has appointed an Organis- ing Instructress, Miss Hettie Jeffries, who is a trained nurse and has had wide experience with defectives. She is entirely responsible for the management of each Centre and the training of the children, though correspondence and adminis- trative matters are dealt with at the Office.
It is hoped to train Workers and Assistants in these Centres who can be left to carry on by themselves with an occasional visit from the Instructor. In Weston-super-Mare such an Assistant is already trained and ready to manage by herself.
The Somerset Association have been very much gratified with the success of the work which has been even greater than had been anticipated. It is hoped to open a third Centre in the Autumn of this year.
Central Lancashire Association’s Occupation Centres.
The Central Lancashire Association started an Occupation Centre for ex- Special School girls at Blackburn in April last. The Centre is at present open one afternoon a week and is held in the Board Room of the Charity Organisation Society which is lent for the occasion. The initial expenses were met by volun- tary subscriptions and gifts of material. Seven girls are on the register (average attendance, five), and they are occupied in rug-making, basket-making, knitting, etc.
A workshop for boys and young men has also just been started in a room at the Blackburn Special School which has been placed at the disposal of the Association for the purpose on three afternoons a week, from 3-30 to 5-50. The services of an Instructor from the Calderstones Institution have been lent as a temporary arrangement. The workshop is at present attended by seven boys and youths? (three being ex-service men)?who are being taught boot repairing, the necessary equipment having been paid for out of the funds of the Association.
The Association hopes eventually to be able to have both Centres open more frequently and to provide them with permanent paid teachers.
The Cassel Hospital.
The Cassel Hospital for Functional Nervous Diseases has recently been opened at Sway lands, Penshurst, Kent, under the directorship of Dr. T. A. Ross. It will accommodate 60 patients and is specially designed to meet the need of members of the middle class who cannot afford to pay large fees. We hope to publish a fuller account of the work of the Hospital in a subse- quent issue.
Stoke-on-Trent Psychiatric Clinic.
The Annual Report for 1920 of Dr. Robert Hughes, School Medical Officer for Stoke-on-Trent, contains an interesting section dealing with work done in connection with the Psychiatric Clinic.
Special attention has been devoted during the year to Ascertainment under the Education (Defective and Epileptic Children) Act and the M.D. Act, and the report discusses the difficulty of obtaining reliable returns for this purpose and advocates the universal use of the “Educational Quotient” as a standard on which to base measurements of retardation. With this object in view a new form has been drawn up to be circulated to Head Teachers asking for the child’s chron- ological age, the standard which it has reached and whether it is considered fit for that standard. The Report goes on to describe the procedure and working principles of Medico-Psychological examinations at the Clinic and gives some interesting statistics as to the incidence and causation of its cases of mental deficiency together with a list of the chief physical defects found in connection with retarded or unstable children. A criticism of the relative merits and defects of the Goddardand Stanford Revision of the Binet Tests follows, together with a tabular statement of the Intelligence Quotients of 313 children examined at the Clinic.
Emphasis is laid on the importance of recognising the existence of the tem- peramentally unstable child and a recent development in the work of the Clinic is an arrangement entered into with the Medical Superintendent of the local Mental Hospital whereby a list of admissions thereto is supplied to the School Medical Officer in order that school children who are relatives of these patients may be submitted to a Psychological examination. It is hoped that this will lead to the detection and early treatment of children of unstable mental con- stitution and consequently to the prevention of mental disease.
Another recent development is a scheme for the medico-psychological exam- ination of children of school age who are referred by the Local Justices. For fuller information as to the activities of the clinic the reader is referred to the Report itself, copies of which can be obtained on application to the Stoke- on-Trent Education Offices,
Report of Lancashire School Medical Officer.
Another recently published School Medical Officer’s Report which should be of interest to students of mental deficiency is that of Dr. Butterworth, County School Medical Officer to the Lancashire Education Committee (County Offices, Preston).
The Report contains detailed accounts of enquiries conducted by Dr. Cooper, Assistant County Medical Officer, into the causes of, and conditions associated with retarded educational progress, and into Speech Defects and the allied condi- tions of Word Blindness and Word Deafness in school children.
Both these latter sections are of particular value as they contain not only a description of the various kinds of Speech Defects with suggestions as to their treatment and some interesting examples of cases of Word Blindness and Deafness, but also a scientific explanation of the mental processes involved in reading and speaking.
Experiment re Possibilities of Sub-Normal Girls in Factory Work.
In the April number of “Mental Hygiene” there is an interesting article on an experiment to determine the possibilities of sub-normal girls in factory work, which was carried on for eight months in a rubber factory in an American town, with the advice of Prof. Arnold Gesell, of Yale. The experiment unfortunately had to be prematurely discontinued on account of trade depression, but lasted long enough to yield some suggestive results.
It took the form of a “special class” held in one of the workrooms of the factory where a small group of sub-normal girls were set to work on certain selected processes of the rubber trade and carefully supervised and studied.
The numbers fluctuated but were at no one time larger than 12, although altogether 23 girls passed through the class. They consisted of two groups, imbeciles (mental age, 5 to 7), and “morons” or feeble-minded (mental age, 5 to 11). The majority had previously been discharged from other places or were unable to secure employment at all even in a period of good trade. In each case a complete history was obtained and a Stanford Revision test applied.
Careful selection was made of the work suitable for each group. The im- beciles were confined to picking paper from certain parts of the rubber shoe and laying the pieces in rows of 24 (sub-divided into <L rows of 6, to overcome their difficulty in counting); the morons worked at the simpler processes connected with the preparation of the various parts of the rubber before being made up.
For the first three months of the experiment a flat rate equal to about 87% of the normal rate for new employees was paid. It was then found that the lower-grade girls were not capable of earning this amount, and that the system did not call forth their best efforts. A sliding scale was thereupon introduced, on a basis ensuring the easy exceeding of the minimum which was fixed at eight dollars.
During the last month payment was made entirely by piece rate by which time, with three exceptions, all the members of the class were able to earn at least eight dollars a week.
The individual output varied considerably and was found to be affected by unfavourable physical conditions such as cold, as well as by such factors as change of work involving readjustment. The girls, as might be expected, were found to do best at routine work, and the experiment demonstrated that certain charac- teristics peculiar to defectives are of real industrial value. They are, lor instance, more reliable than normal workers (the percentage of absenteeism from the special class was only .36 of 1% as against approximately 5% in the rest of the factory); they are unaffected by monotony, and they do not object to doing unpleasant work of a kind which is distasteful to other workers.
The experiment was well received by the other employees in the factory who watched it with friendly interest. The improvement in the girls was striking and was frequently commented on by social workers and others to whom they were known. Girls who had been restless and difficult ceased to give trouble, and dull, lethargic girls were stimulated and brightened. Only two were classed as failures.
The conditions necessary to achieve this success are indicated, amongst them being the provision of a separate room for the subnormal workers, the careful selection of a supervisor, the enforcing of strict discipline with dismissal from the class if necessary (an example is given where this resulted in an appreciable increase in output on the part of the remaining girls); and the plentiful provision of incentive by the stimulation of friendly rivalry and the meting out of frequent individual praise and encouragement.
The article concludes with a plea for the systematic establishment of such industrial classes, based on the conviction of their utility as a method of dealing with the problem of the mentally defective left in the community, and suggests that where an industry itself is unwilling to bear the expense of the necessary preliminary training, it would be worth while for the State to pay the salary of a Director while leaving the industry to provide the work and overhead charges. Retirement of Sir William Byrne.
The occasion of the retirement of Sir William Byrne from the Chairmanship of the Board of Control is one which cannot be allowed by the Central Association for the Care of the Mentally Defective to pass in silence.
It was from him that the idea which gave rise to the Association?the need of some central organising body to act as a connecting limk between the various Authorities and Voluntary Societies concerned with the care of defectives? emanated, and he has never failed to uphold the principle that official work should, in this as in other spheres of social activity, be assisted and supplemented by voluntary effort.
As Chairman of the Central Association for the Care of the Mentally Defective I desire to put on record our appreciation of the help he has given us and of his sympathetic consideration for the special difficulties which we, as voluntary workers, have had to face during the years of his Chairmanship of the Board.
(Signed) Leslie Scott, Chairman, C.A.M.D.
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