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Warnock (1978) Notes on the text
Appendices Appendix 1 List of contributors
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The Warnock Report (1978)
Special educational needs Report of the Committee of Enquiry into the education of handicapped children and young people London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1978
ISBN 0 10 172120 X
Chapter 14: Other staff employed in the education service
INTRODUCTION 14.1 The different professions whose members are employed by local education authorities to provide services to teachers, pupils and parents all make an important contribution to services for children with special needs. Our concept of special education has significant implications for their pattern of work, their initial and in-service training and their numbers. In this chapter we examine these implications so far as they concern educational psychologists, careers officers, education welfare officers, nursery nurses, classroom ancillaries and, in Scotland, instructors*. We also comment on those aspects of the work of school counsellors, careers teachers, guidance teachers and home-school liaison teachers which involve the provision of guidance and support for children and young people with special needs, and for their parents. *References to instructors in this chapter are confined to instructors in special schools for severely mentally handicapped children in Scotland. 14.2 The broader view of special education adopted in this report will require an awareness on the part of all the professionals mentioned in this chapter, no less than teachers, that up to one in five children may need special educational provision at some time during their school career. Since all these workers have direct contact with children, they must know how to recognise signs of special needs and must be aware of the range of services available to meet these needs. Moreover, in the light of our recommendations for increased opportunities for early educational provision for young children with special needs and for further education for young people with such needs, they will need to appreciate the importance of continuity of concern from early childhood to early adulthood. Further, the increased and improved arrangements for inter-professional working which we have proposed will call for the development of close relationships between them and teachers and other professionals in local authority and health services. Our recommendations will thus have significant implications for the training of these various professionals, the supply of trained personnel in each field of work and organisational arrangements within each profession. They will also call for some reconsideration of the priorities accorded to different aspects of work within each professional area. 14.3 We deal first with educational psychologists and careers officers, who provide services to all schools as part of their work and who have important concerns in common with the special education advisory and support service outlined in the last chapter. We then turn to those teachers and members of other professions who are concerned with establishing links between home and school. Teaching apart, these various professions are all based outside schools, but each is effective to the extent that its members are known in schools and work with teachers and pupils as well as with parents. Finally, we consider a different group of workers who are part of the staff of ordinary and special schools and who collaborate with teachers in the day to day care of children with special needs.
I EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGISTS 14.4 The first appointment of a psychologist by a local education authority was made in 1913 when Cyril Burt was appointed by the London County Council. The numbers of educational psychologists have steadily increased over time and at a quickening pace in the last 15 years. Their work and training have been influenced by the Kilbrandon Report in Scotland and by the Summerfield Report in England and Wales. (1) The former contributed to an extension of the functions of educational psychologists in the Education (Scotland) Act 1969. There is no corresponding statutory definition of the functions of educational psychologists in England and Wales but in view of our recommended procedures for assessment and for recording certain children as in need of special educational provision it may be desirable that educational psychologists should, in future, have a statutory status. 14.5 In England and Wales almost all local education authorities employ educational psychologists and many have a well developed school psychological service. In Scotland, where the Education (Scotland) Act 1969 requires every education authority to establish a child guidance service, the local psychological services are also well developed, and educational psychologists are employed by all authorities. The present ratio of psychologists to the school population is on average one to 11,000 in England and Wales and one to 4,000 in Scotland. These averages cover a wide range from a psychologist working single-handed in one English authority to a ratio of one to 2,000 in a Scottish authority. Demands on educational psychologists 14.6 The Summerfield Report in 1968 recommended a ratio of one educational psychologist to 10,000 school children. Since then a number of additional demands has been made on educational psychologists in England and Wales. These have arisen from the transfer of responsibility for mentally handicapped children to the education service in 1971, increased provision for children below statutory school age, the reorganisation of secondary education, the raising of the school leaving age in 1972-73, an increased incidence of disturbed and disturbing behaviour in schools and the new procedures for the assessment of children with special needs advocated in Circular 2/75. (2) In the following paragraphs we consider a number of these demands in more detail and identify the further demands which will arise from our recommendations. 14.7 The procedures for the discovery and assessment of special needs outlined in Chapter 4 call for three kinds of contribution by psychologists. First their specialised knowledge of observation techniques and assessment procedures will be needed to help head teachers and teachers develop school-based assessment at Stages 1 to 3 and to help teachers and other staff who are working with children below statutory school age. Secondly they will generally be involved in the assessment of the special educational needs of individual children at Stage 3 in school or as members of multi-professional teams at Stages 4 and 5. Thirdly our proposals for monitoring whole age groups of children at different stages during their school life will require their professional skills. Involvement in assessment, either directly or indirectly through their work with teachers, will therefore be a continuing and increasing demand on psychologists' time. It will also be the foundation of their many other and varied contributions to local authority services for children and young people with special needs. 14.8 Educational psychologists have been concerned increasingly with children with emotional or behavioural disorders. They now play a central part in the discovery of such children, in helping them and their teachers in schools and in working with individual children out of school. We generally endorse the conclusions reached in Chapter 15 of the Court Report (3) on the services needed for children and adolescents with a marked abnormality of behaviour, emotional development or personal or social relationships, but we regard the term 'children with psychiatric disorder', which is used in the Court Report, as less satisfactory than 'children with emotional and behavioural disorders' or 'maladjusted children'. We think it undesirable to draw a sharp distinction between psychiatric disorders and other emotional or behavioural difficulties; further, the term 'children with psychiatric disorder' may lead to the conclusion that all such children should be treated by psychiatrists. In our view psychologists, working where necessary with psychiatrists and social workers, should remain foremost in helping teachers to deal with emotional and behavioural problems when they occur in school. We discuss the contribution of psychiatrists in more detail in the next chapter (paragraph 15.25). 14.9 Our recommendations for better and more extensive early education programmes for children under five with special needs will call for increasing help from educational psychologists, particularly in the planning and development of programmes carried out by parents, teachers and others. At a later stage the psychologist's expertise will often be needed in the planning of programmes within the curriculum for pupils who require special educational provision, whether in ordinary or special schools. Further, educational psychologists may be expected to contribute significantly to the provision of continuing and further education for young people over 16 with special needs by working with them and their teachers in schools and colleges, by developing programmes for individual pupils or students and by providing information to careers officers and contributing to vocational guidance for individual young people with special needs. 14.10 We proposed in Chapters 5 and 9 that parents should have a Named Person to whom they can turn for advice on the different services available and for guidance as they follow their child's progress at school. In certain circumstances the educational psychologist may be the most suitable person to act as Named Person for the parents of some children whose special needs are assessed at Stage 4 or 5 and, in the light of that assessment, are recorded as requiring special educational provision. 14.11 We outlined in Chapter 12 a pattern of courses of in-service training for teachers with responsibility for children with special educational needs. Although many of these courses will be primarily in the hands of the proposed special education advisory and support service, their quality will be enhanced by the special expertise which educational psychologists can contribute. This includes an understanding on the part of most educational psychologists of research methodology, which should enable them to appraise and communicate to teachers the results of relevant research and development. We hope that psychologists working in the education service will themselves have time to carry out locally-based research in collaboration with establishments of higher education and with teachers in schools, and we return to this in Chapter 18. Staffing levels 14.12 The staffing levels of psychological services for children need to be considered in relation both to the functions of the services and to the supporting services which complement and supplement their work. Research being undertaken for the Department of Education and Science (4) and a recent inquiry carried out by the Division of Educational and Child Psychology of the British Psychological Society (5) as well as a report by the Principal Psychologists of Scotland (6) suggest that the additional demands which have been made on educational psychologists in recent years cannot be met by the present establishments in most areas. Both the British Psychological Society and the Association of Educational Psychologists have recommended that staffing levels in England and Wales should be based on a ratio of one educational psychologist to 5,000 children (not confined to pupils in schools). This does not, however, take into account the additional demands which will arise from certain of our own proposals. In Scotland a ratio of one educational psychologist to 3,000 children is generally accepted as a reasonable basis for the development of local services, given the additional demands which have been made in recent years, including those arising from the transfer of responsibility for mentally handicapped children to the education service in 1975, and the statutory duties laid on the child guidance service by the Education (Scotland) Act 1969. These include the psychological examination of children, the giving of advice to parents as to appropriate methods of education and training, in suitable cases the provision of special education for such children in child guidance clinics, and the giving of advice to a local authority regarding the assessment of the needs of any child for the purposes of any of the provisions of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968. In addition, the requirement on education authorities under Section 66 of the Education (Scotland) Act 1969 to keep generally under consideration the cases of children ascertained as requiring special education has important implications for the work load of educational psychologists. Since educational psychologists in Scotland have a number of statutory duties which do not exist in England and Wales, it cannot be assumed that the staffing levels of psychological services for children in Scotland would also be appropriate in England and Wales. At the same time, however, we regard a ratio of one psychologist to 5,000 children as recommended by the British Psychological Society and the Association of Educational Psychologists as the minimum that is likely to be adequate. We therefore recommend that initial training arrangements for educational psychologists should be increased so as to allow local education authorities in England and Wales to attain a target of at least one psychologist to 5,000 children and young people up to the age of 19. The relationship between educational psychologists and advisers in special education 14.13 In the previous chapter we outlined the different contributions of the proposed special education advisory and support service and the psychological service to schools. The former will be concerned with the quality of special education, curriculum development and the professional development of teachers working in special education, and its members may also supply some specialist teaching for children with special needs. The psychological service, for its part, will be primarily concerned with the needs of individual children, and also with providing support for schools and parents to prevent the development of significant learning and behavioural difficulties. Work with children will entail both the assessment of their special educational needs, followed by the formulation of recommendations for individual programmes within the curriculum, and the development of proposals for ways of helping individual children to achieve satisfying personal relationships. We consider that the two services have distinct sets of functions which, although they overlap, need to be carried out by different people. Educational psychologists may wish to become advisers in special education where their training and experience are suitable. However, we are strongly of the opinion that the posts of adviser in special education and educational psychologist should not be combined. As we indicated in the last chapter, the senior adviser in special education and the chief educational psychologist should nevertheless work closely together and both should work to the same administrative officer of the local education authority. The relationship between educational and clinical psychologists 14.14 Educational psychologists, who have nearly all had teaching experience and professional training, generally work in the education service. Clinical psychologists work in the health service, most of them with adults, but some with children. There is therefore some overlap in the functions of educational and clinical psychologists in respect of work with children and young people. This was brought to our attention in evidence and in the reports of the Trethowan and Court Committees. (7) We have not given this issue detailed consideration but were interested to note that the recent inquiry by the Division of Educational and Child Psychology of the British Psychological Society revealed a considerable degree of local cooperation between psychologists working in the education and health services. In our view there is a need for much further discussion on the development of psychological services for children, given the waste of skill and work that can result where arrangements are duplicated because of lack of coordination between the services. We regard it as essential that better coordinated working arrangements should be planned in future. This would be facilitated by the sharing of experience between educational and clinical psychologists through common elements of training. We therefore recommend that course modules common to the training of educational and clinical psychologists should be developed. Training 14.15 The training of educational psychologists needs further development. In initial training more attention should be given to the needs of children under five and of children with emotional or behavioural disorders or multiple and complex disabilities, and a broader range of experience should be provided during courses. We recognise that the usual one-year course may have to be lengthened to include these elements and we acknowledge the value of those two-year courses which have been established. But we particularly wish to stress the need for more post-qualification courses for educational psychologists. These courses, which could be held jointly for educational and clinical psychologists and other professionals working in special education, should provide training in specialised areas of work and should update knowledge and skills. Attendance at such courses should in our view be an essential qualification for senior posts concerned with specialised responsibilities and posts with general responsibility for services in the local education authority. We therefore recommend that existing training centres for educational psychologists and other establishments and organisations should institute a range of in-service courses, varying in both length and content.
II CAREERS OFFICERS 14.16 As we pointed out in Chapters 10 and 11, members of the local authority careers service can play an important part in helping careers and guidance teachers in schools to develop programmes which inform pupils about career opportunities and prepare them for the world of work. Our broader concept of special education means that all careers officers, generalists as well as those who specialise in helping young people with disabilities, will come into contact with young people with special needs in the course of their work. They will therefore all need to be aware of the implications of special needs for further and higher education, training and work. We start by considering the extra demands on the careers service which are likely to arise from our recommendations. Demands on careers officers 14.17 Careers officers and their specialist colleagues will be closely involved in providing school leavers with special needs with information, advice and guidance about further and higher education, training and employment and in helping in more specialist assessment specifically directed to employment. Our recommendation in Chapter 10 that careers officers should always be involved in the reassessment of special needs at least two years before young people are due to leave school will make additional demands on them and increase the need for training in this field, to which we return below. 14.18 We recommended in Chapter 10 that the careers officer or, in the case of young people with more severe or complex disabilities, the specialist careers officer, should be the Named Person for young people with special needs and their parents during the transition from school to adult life or should ensure that another professional takes on the function of Named Person. This would be an extension of the careers officer's present concern to see young people settled in suitable employment wherever possible. Every young person with a disability or significant difficulty should have a Named Person to whom to turn in the first few years after he has completed full-time education and training. The careers officer or his specialist colleague should carry out this function until satisfied that the young person no longer requires a Named Person or that the function has been assumed by another professional. Careers officers and their specialist colleagues will need to maintain close links with Disablement Resettlement Officers and other professionals so that they can ensure that responsibility for being Named Person is assigned to the most suitable professional in each particular case. Training 14.19 The initial training of careers officers already includes an element designed to develop their awareness of special needs in young people. Our evidence suggests, however, that when pupils with disabilities or significant difficulties are educated in ordinary schools the need for specialised careers advice is not always understood and that, even where it is, such advice is not readily available. Greater emphasis may therefore need to be placed on this element of initial training and particularly on helping careers officers to recognise when specialist careers advice is needed. In addition, careers officers already in post should have the same opportunity as future entrants to the profession to develop an awareness of special needs. This will require the provision of short in-service courses dealing with the transition from school to work of young people with special needs. We understand that the content of initial training courses for careers officers is currently being reviewed by the Local Government Training Board. We therefore recommend that the Local Government Training Board should review the element in the initial training of careers officers which is concerned with young people with special needs and should develop in-service courses on special needs for all careers officers in post who have not already taken this element. Some in-service courses for careers officers as well as for careers teachers could be organised by the regional conferences for special education to which we refer in more detail in Chapter 16. There will continue, however, to be a need for central provision by the Local Government Training Board of opportunities for the study by careers officers of the problems associated with specific disabilities. 14.20 We envisage that specialist careers officers will work directly with young people with special needs in special schools and in association with their non-specialist colleagues when they are consulted about individual pupils in ordinary schools. Experience as a careers officer working with young people in ordinary schools should precede appointment as a specialist officer. We recommend that careers officers wishing to specialise in work with young people with disabilities or significant difficulties should undertake training on lines similar to that of Disablement Resettlement Officers. (This begins with a seven-week course based on the National Training Centre for Disablement Resettlement Officers at Leeds and is supplemented later by further in-service training courses, seminars and conferences.) We expect that courses for specialist careers officers will generally be organised by the Local Government Training Board. The Special Education Staff College proposed in Chapter 18 will however play an important part, particularly in the organisation of courses with other professionals concerned with young people with special needs. Staffing and career structure 14.21 We pointed out in Chapter 10 that if the careers officer or his specialist colleague is to work closely with individual young people both before and after they leave school, it will be necessary for the careers service to be considerably strengthened. Accordingly we recommended that, as a general guide and on the understanding that adequate support would be provided, one full-time specialist careers officer should be appointed for every 50,000 of the school population (or for a substantial proportion of 50,000). It is essential that there should be a recognised career structure for careers officers with specialist training and that specialist work should be regarded as a valuable asset for promotion to posts at a higher level in the careers service with general responsibilities. Further, we recommend that some senior posts in local education authority careers services should be made available to careers officers specialising in work with young people with disabilities or significant difficulties.
III PROFESSIONALS WHO LINK HOME AND SCHOOL 14.22 Good links between home and school are essential if effective support is to be provided for parents and their cooperation is to be encouraged and maintained. Further, such links are required if teachers are to learn about children's home circumstances where appropriate and so understand and take account of individual needs. Throughout this report we have stressed that teachers and parents of children with disabilities and difficulties should work closely together. In ordinary schools some teachers may be specially appointed as teacher-counsellors, guidance teachers or home-school liaison teachers with responsibilities for work with parents of children with special needs and for maintaining links with other services and agencies outside school. We consider it important that they should have special training for the purpose which gives them a deeper knowledge of the special needs of such children. In special schools many more teachers may work closely with parents, particularly when parents take part in educational programmes for their children. Many special schools will also need the services of social workers. Some, particularly those for children with emotional and behavioural disorders, and especially those providing residential education, will require a school-based social worker able to maintain links with families and with social services in the child's home neighbourhood. Some such appointments have already been made. The primary concern of a social worker attached to a special school must be the children in the school, and a person so employed should obviously be in sympathy with the aims and ethos of the school if his or her work is to be effective. Social workers 14.23 Both ordinary and special schools need to work closely with social services departments and with social workers in respect of individual children with special needs and their families. There is much overlap in the work of social workers, education welfare officers, school counsellors, guidance teachers and home-school liaison teachers, and their separate functions need clarification. Since the Seebohm Report (8) social services departments have had responsibilities for the care and welfare of handicapped children and young people and for the support of their families. However, scarcity of resources, particularly of trained manpower, has meant that the contribution of social workers has often been limited to intervention in crises. Even with a continuing increase in the number of social workers who are qualified, it is unlikely, in the foreseeable future, that social services departments will be able to work with all the families of the children who may have special educational needs. In practice their concern in the educational context is likely to be limited usually to those children whose needs are recorded by the local education authority. Regular interaction between school counsellors, social workers in schools, guidance teachers, home-school liaison teachers and education welfare officers will therefore be particularly important in ensuring that children and their families receive appropriate help. We see the need for social workers and education welfare officers to work closely together in each area; the former engaged on social case work with particular families and also working directly in some special schools where disturbed family relationships affect a child's education; and the latter, among other duties, facilitating good home-school links for all other children with special needs. A flexible administrative structure is needed both in social work and in schools if links between schools and the homes of children with special needs are to be forged and patterns of contact established which will help define the particular contributions of each professional. Whatever pattern of working is developed in each area the need for school-based welfare services of one kind or another is in our view essential, particularly for children with special needs. We therefore recommend that local authorities should ensure, through cooperation between their education and social services departments, that adequate social work services are available to meet the needs of children who require special help in all schools in their area, that the social workers are clearly linked to individual schools or groups of schools and that, where appropriate, the social workers are school-based. 14.24 For some parents of children whose special needs are assessed at Stage 4 or 5 of our proposed assessment procedure and who are recorded as requiring special educational provision, the Named Person may most appropriately be a social worker. As with other professionals acting as Named Person, the social worker should be familiar with the education and health services for children with special needs and should know to whom to turn for special help when necessary. Education welfare officers 14.25 Local education authorities need 'field officers' to carry out a variety of important non-teaching functions such as checking on and enforcing school attendance, arranging school transport, providing information to individual families about entitlement to free school meals, educational maintenance allowances, grants for school uniforms and other matters, conducting censuses particularly of children under five and providing escorts for children to and from schools. In England and Wales these functions are carried out by education welfare officers and in Scotland some of them are performed by school attendance officers. In the course of their work these officers inevitably come into contact with children with special educational needs and their families and, indeed, they may well be able to detect special needs in children and mobilise help for them. They thus have an indispensable part to play in the support of children with special needs. 14.26 The close concern of education welfare officers in identifying and arranging help for children with special educational needs emerged clearly from a recent survey of their work by Keith MacMillan. (9) 67 per cent of officers in his survey had duties with handicapped children; 45 per cent were concerned with finding places and arranging admission to special schools; and 40 per cent with making arrangements for home teaching under Section 56 of the Education Act 1944 (as amended). Almost all officers were involved at some time or other in transporting and escorting children to and from residential schools. The survey also revealed that in the course of their various contacts with families education welfare officers often discovered children under five with special educational needs. Additionally, their specific enquiries and visits in connection with the enforcement of school attendance gave opportunity for the discovery of special educational needs amongst children of school age. 14.27 We recognise that there are still uncertainties about the way in which education welfare services should be developed and about the interrelationship of education welfare and social work. But we are quite clear that the education welfare service is an essential practical arm of the local education authority and has a very important part to play in providing support for children with special educational needs and their families. We recommend that further studies should be undertaken to determine the best way of providing the essential though in some respects overlapping services carried out by education welfare officers and social workers. Training 14.28 The training of education welfare officers was the subject of a report by a Local Government Training Board working party chaired by Sir Lincoln Ralphs, which recommended a number of improvements. (10) We consider that education welfare officers need an understanding not only of the education system generally but also of the special educational needs which many children have. We therefore recommend that education welfare officers should be helped in initial and in-service training to recognise signs of special educational needs and to be aware of the ways in which the education and other services can meet such needs.
IV OTHER IMPORTANT WORKERS IN SCHOOLS 14.29 In this section we deal with four groups of people whose work with teachers with responsibility for children with special needs has a significant influence on the quality of special education provided. These are nursery nurses, ancillary workers in classrooms, residential child care workers and instructors in schools for the severely mentally handicapped in Scotland. All will benefit from training related to their work with children with disabilities and difficulties. Equally, most teachers need in-service training to work with these staff more effectively. Nursery nurses 14.30 Nursery nurses work in a variety of settings with children with special needs, including day nurseries, nursery schools and classes and residential homes for young children. Sometimes they take responsibility for the care of groups of children and sometimes they participate with teachers in the early education of children. Their training is recognised as very effective in developing an awareness of child development and the knowledge and skills necessary for young children in day and residential settings. 14.31 As we noted in Chapter 5, many children in ordinary day nurseries, playgroups and nursery schools or classes may have special needs. It is therefore important that nursery nurses employed in these establishments or groups should be able to recognise signs of such needs and assist in meeting them. We recognise the value of their training and are aware that many nursery nurses are already skilled in detecting special needs. Those nursery nurses who are employed in special nursery classes, opportunity groups and other types of provision intended for children with more severe disabilities or difficulties, including older children with a very low developmental age, will need more specialist knowledge. We have already welcomed in Chapter 5 the development of pilot courses leading to the advanced certificate of the National Nursery Examination Board and the Scottish NNEB, which are designed to give nursery nurses a deeper knowledge of children with special needs. We hope that at least one such course will be developed in each region. Moreover, as we recommended in that chapter, nursery nurses need opportunities to attend in-service courses organised on an inter-professional basis. The career prospects of nursery nurses are often limited, particularly within the education service; and ways need to be found to recognise the responsibilities of more senior nursery nurses where a number of nursery nurses is employed in anyone school. As a step towards this we recommend that the possession by nursery nurses working in day nurseries, playgroups, nursery schools or classes of the advanced certificate of the National Nursery Examination Board or the Scottish NNEB should carry an increase in salary. Ancillary workers 14.32 In the course of our visits to schools we became aware of the important contribution made by ancillary staff, sometimes called non-teaching assistants, to the work of classes and groups of handicapped children, and our evidence suggests that this is particularly the case where there are young children, children with severe disabilities and emotionally disturbed children. Not only do they provide care for the children but they enable teachers to concentrate their attention on individuals and small groups. Moreover, they themselves carry out important educational work with children under the direction of the teacher. As we pointed out in Chapter 8, the staff-pupil ratios suggested in the Circular on the staffing of special schools issued in 1973 (11) are based on the assumption that adequate numbers of suitable ancillary staff are available. We have found that local education authorities have very different ideas of the strength of ancillary support required in schools, and we therefore recommended in Chapter 8 that guidance should be issued in a further Circular on the numbers of ancillary staff that should be regarded as adequate. We considered recommending particular staffing ratios but were aware that local circumstances vary. However we would suggest that where children are immobile and need regular training in feeding and looking after themselves there should probably be one ancillary worker for every four or five children. We recommend that special classes for children of primary school age, whether in special schools or units or attached to ordinary schools, and special classes for children of secondary school age with physical disabilities, severe learning difficulties or emotional or behavioural disorders should each have at least one ancillary worker. Further, the help of an ancillary worker is often crucial to the effective placement of an individual child with a disability or disorder in an ordinary class. An ancillary worker should be provided for each child who needs such support, but it should be possible in many cases for him to be employed in this capacity on a part-time basis and often to combine this work with other necessary tasks within the school. 14.33 Ancillary workers are usually chosen for their sympathetic attitude to children and their experience as parents. Indeed, the care, extra understanding and affection they offer can be very important to some children. They have little training, except where school-based in-service training is well developed, and they rely on the teachers with whom they work for guidance as to their duties. We think that courses for ancillary workers are needed which include particular attention to child development and we would urge that such staff should be encouraged to take advantage of them. Child care staff in residential special schools 14.34 Child care workers and teachers who undertake residential care act in many ways as parents, and in special schools they are often seen as such by the children. The importance of close collaboration between teachers and child care workers in these circumstances should be self-evident. Their work overlaps and both groups contribute to and facilitate the personal development of children, as we pointed out in Chapter 8. We have noted that a survey carried out by Her Majesty's Inspectorate in 1970 revealed that only 9 per cent of child care staff in special schools were trained residential child care workers. Although courses of different kinds have been introduced since that time the percentage of trained staff is still low. The contribution of child care staff is vital to the effectiveness of boarding special schools and in the following paragraphs we consider their functions, their training and the staffing levels necessary for them to carry out their duties well. 14.35 Although child care work includes some domestic duties, these should not be so extensive as to limit the time which the staff can spend in personal contact with the pupils in the school. It should be recognised that child care staff have a responsibility for establishing close personal relationships with the children which supplement family experiences, and that in many cases they may act as substitute parents. This is a facet of their work which has been adequately appreciated only in recent years and there is scope for its further development. Trained and experienced staff can create patterns of living which reduce the institutional effects of boarding schools and encourage individual development, and their independent contribution to children's development needs to be more fully recognised. The staffing levels required obviously depend on the nature of the premises, the nature and severity of the children's disabilities and the methods of care and treatment chosen. Nevertheless we regard it as important that the Education Departments should give general guidance on desirable staffing levels. As a general principle we suggest that the teaching staff ratios outlined in Circular 4/73 and the Scottish Education Department's Consultative Document (12) should be used as a guide to the number of child care staff required; thus the younger the children and the more severe their disabilities the better the staffing ratio should be. The ratios should also take into account the need for intimate groupings of children in day to day living and for a stable and enduring relationship between individual staff and children. 14.36 Working with handicapped children in residence, particularly those with sensory and physical disabilities, requires special training. For this reason all child care staff should have an induction course when they first take up work in residential special schools. We are aware that the Certificate in Social Service now being developed gives scope for covering in a course of professional training some aspects of the work of child care staff in boarding special schools. However, the Certificate may not give sufficient weight to the problems of working with children with some types of disability, for example deaf children or children with severe learning difficulties. Further thought therefore needs to be given to the provision of in-service training for child care staff in boarding schools. We recommend that special training leading to a recognised qualification should be available for child care staff in residential special schools, whatever their previous qualifications, along lines compatible with that for staff in community homes. We hope that the regional conferences for special education, whose functions we discuss further in Chapter 16, will give particular attention to the development of such training. Teachers working in residential special schools also need training in aspects of residential child care and they should be given opportunities to take courses in this field along with other professionals concerned with meeting the needs of children who require residential special education. 14.37 A career structure is needed for child care staff, not confined solely to special schools but extending to community homes run by social services departments. Indeed, we would welcome an interchange of child care staff between education and social services departments. We recommend that there should be one post in boarding special schools at deputy head level, carrying responsibility for all arrangements for residential care, and that this should be open to trained child care staff. Instructors in special schools in Scotland 14.38 From 1947 to 1975 schools for severely mentally handicapped children in Scotland were known as junior occupational centres and were staffed in the main by instructors who completed a short in-service course at Jordanhill College of Education. The Report of the Melville Committee (13) recommended that such centres should be known as schools and that teachers should be employed in all of them. It also recommended the introduction of two-year courses for instructors designed to prepare them to work alongside teachers with the following main responsibilities: i. encourage children to develop independence in basic social functions such as feeding, toileting and dressing; ii. stimulate the social and emotional development of the child by encouraging cooperation in groups; iii. promote the child's development by skilful use of play; iv. cooperate with parents in promoting the full development of the child; and v. advise the teaching staff about individual children and the need for links with social and health services and voluntary agencies. Because of financial constraints the training courses for instructors have been restricted to one year. We recommend that training courses for instructors in Scotland should be extended to two years and that education authorities should consider providing posts of responsibility for instructors where a number is employed in any one school. This would be in line with the recommendations of the Melville Committee.
CONCLUSION 14.39 In this chapter we have considered the work and training of a number of different people who make an important contribution to provision for children with special needs in ordinary and special schools and elsewhere. The main needs are for improved training, increased staffing and better developed patterns of working between different professionals to eliminate duplication of effort and to ensure the best use of limited resources. We urge the regional conferences for special education and individual local education authorities to put into practice the suggestions made in this chapter for staffing levels and training. In particular we hope that every opportunity will be taken to provide post-qualification training on an inter-professional basis so that mutual understanding and cooperative patterns of working can be fostered between teachers, other members of the education service, and professionals in the health and social services.
References (1) Children and young persons, Scotland Report by the Committee appointed by the Secretary of State for Scotland. Cmnd 2306 (HMSO, 1964). Psychologists in education services The Report of a Working Party appointed by the Secretary of State for Education and Science: the Summerfield Report (HMSO 1968). (2) DES Circular 2/75, Welsh Office Circular 21/75, The discovery of children requiring special education and the assessment of their needs (17 March 1975), (3) Fit for the future The Report of the Committee on Child Health Services. Cmnd 6684 (HMSO 1976). The Report concluded that the aim should be to provide a staffing level of at least one child psychiatrist per 35,000 children over the next decade; child guidance clinics and psychiatric hospital services should be recognised as an integrated child and adolescent psychiatry service; greater attention should in future be paid to the provision of psychiatric services for children of pre-school age; there should be a greatly increased provision of residential facilities such as hostels, schools and hospital units. (4) Wright HJ, Evaluation of a school psychological service (Research Project started in September 1975 by Hampshire LEA). (5) 'Psychological services for children: DECP Inquiry into psychological services for children in England and Wales - Preliminary summary of findings', Bulletin of the British Psychological Society 31 (January 1978), 11-15. (6) Child guidance services - the future A Report by the Principal Psychologists of Scotland (September 1972). (7) Consultation Document from the Sub-Committee reporting on the Role of Psychologists in the Health Services (DHSS 1974); Fit for the future op. cit. (8) Report of the Committee on Local Authority and Allied Personal Social Services. Cmnd 3703 (HMSO 1968). (9) MacMillan K Education welfare: strategy and structure (1977). (10) The training of education welfare officers, The Report of the Working Party (Local Government Training Board, 1973). (11) DES Circular 4/73, Welsh Office Circular 47/73, Staffing of special schools and classes (6 March 1973). Scottish Education Department Memorandum, Revision of Schools (Scotland) Code 1956 (October 1973). (12) Ibid. (13) The training of staff for centres for the mentally handicapped Report of the Committee appointed by the Secretary of State for Scotland (HMSO 1973). 
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