Mentally defective children / Education Department, Leeds.

  • City of Leeds
Date:
1928
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Mentally defective children / Education Department, Leeds. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    13/60 page 11
    iz The details of several cases were given by the [Executive Officer. The letter goes on to point the moral as follows— “The Board of Education in their letter to local education authorities, dated September 1924, point out that the majority of unascertained mental defectives labour under the disadvantages of losing (1) the education, control, and general training in discipline which are provided in the Special Schools; and (2) the care, supervision, and control which are provided under the Mental Deficiency Acts after they have left school; with the result that they are lost in the general population, in many instances to be rediscovered later in the police-courts or rescue homes, when, owing to the Jack of supervision and help, they have done serious injury to themselves and the community. The Board of Education’s statement on the consequences of non-ascertainment is exactly the experience of the Mental Deficiency Acts Committee at the present time.”’ The same point is made in the report of the Leeds Mental Deficiency Act Committee for the year ended 31st December 1926— “The ascertainment of mentally defective persons in the city, although in- creasing yearly, leaves much to be desired. A by no means negligible number of . mental defectives in the city are still unknown to the Local Authority. Many of them leave the Elementary Schools at 14 years of age, when they are compelled into an unequal competition for a living with their normal fellows, and later on they become failures of society. A number of them are shielded from harm in their own homes, others appear in the police-courts charged with the committal of offences, the female class swell the statistics of illegitimate births, and both family and community life suffer the burden, the expense, and the injury which they impose upon it.”’ Another aspect of the same problem which ts also difficult to deal with is late ascertainment. With distressing frequency children are ex- amined by the certifying officer and found to be certifiable at 12 or 13 years of age. A cursory examination of the records reveals 11 such cases in 1927. There are no doubt many more. Six of these were reported by Medical Officers, four by Inspectors, and one by a Head Teacher. They were all of about I.Q. 60, but had nevertheless been allowed to reach Standard V. or VI. in Elementary Schools. More recently still three more cases have come to light of children 134 years of age, who, in the opinion of the examining Medical Officer, ought to be certified. In two of these cases retardation was apparently never reported; in the third case the child had been examined twice before at intervals of 12 months, and on each occasion an I.Q. 51 was found. It is most difficult to know what to do with these cases. They are too old to derive much benefit from the Special School, and the parents have the strongest possible objection to sending them there—not only the general objection discussed below, but the special objection that they have been counting upon their children leaving school soon. In some cases the children are certified but allowed to leave the Elementary Schools at the usual leaving age, and kept under observation until they are 16, and their names then passed on to the Local Control Authority. But whether they are ad- mitted to the Special Schools or not, they are debarred from the peculiar benefit which that type of school gives, and the position is most unsatis- factory. There is clearly a strong case for scrutinising the methods of ascertainment in Leeds and for improving them if possible.
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