[Report 1954] / School Medical Officer of Health, Cumberland County Council.
- Cumberland (England). County Council.
- Date:
- 1954
Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Credit: [Report 1954] / School Medical Officer of Health, Cumberland County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.
10/50 (page 8)
![Ingwell is, of course, a school for boys only. The acquisition of Higham will, I hope, solve the problem of educationally sub-normal girls who for one reason or another require residential special school accommodation, and will also, we hope, provide accommodation for a number of younger boys. There is, however, in respect of educationally sub- normal boys another problem. It is very largely a question j of simple arithmetic. The number of boys ascertained as educationally sub-normal who have been recommended for j admission to special schools averaged about 45 a year during 1953 and 1954, and I do not think that list was complete. ] The future ascertainment figure is anybody’s guess, but on past experience the above figure is likely to be more or less maintained. Once the accommodation at Ingwell is fully taken up in the autumn of this year, vacancies for the next two years or thereabouts will be few, if any, and thereafter will not, I suppose, likely exceed more than eight or ten a year. Even if all these vacancies were available for Cumberland county boys it is clear that between this figure and the estimated annual ascertainment figure of say 40 to 45 a year there will remain a margin which may well be fairly wide. Undoubtedly the establishment of a second residential school for educationally sub-normal children to include a proportion of the younger boys will materially help, and it may well be that the rest of the answer may be found in the expansion of the “progress” class system at present operating in ten or so schools in the county. There might, of course, be another line of approach to this problem. LONG STAY CASES IN HOSPITAL During the early part of the year I was approached by the West Cumberland group of hospitals regarding the possibility of having arrangements made for some educational provision for children who were likely to be in hospital for long periods of say four months or over. At that time I was given a list of some 16 cases of children who had been in hospital during the preceding year for long periods, the longest I think being nearly seven months. It is difficult to form a clear opinion, but my impression is that the number of children staying in our Cumberland hospitals for long periods is on the increase. I do not think the above list of 16 cases was necessarily complete because it did not, for example, include children with orthopaedic conditions admitted to the Keswick Cottage Hospital,](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2913254x_0012.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
