INDEX OF QUOTES
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[The word] ‘treatment’ is as fashionable as it is vacuous. It means whatever
anybody wants it to mean, from the so-called ‘therapeutic community’ to a prison
— everybody is doing treatment. One can go on criticising the ambiguities and
the confusions of the concept, but it maybe more worthwhile to be positive. All
our children come to us because they have problems, and their problems can be
categorised under one of any number of the following six: (1) physical, (2)
intellectual and educational, (3) family, (4) social relationships, (5) social
behaviour, (6) personal problems. The alleviation of these particular problems
is the central task of anybody who sets out to deal with problem children. All
other aspects such as care and education are subsidiary issues to the central
concern of alleviation of the problems — which is how I would define treatment.
A treated chjld would not have as many problems as he had before, or at least he
may have the same problems but at a more acceptable level than before.
The knowledge required to carry out treatment is of two types: firstly — ‘what is the problem?’ and secondly, ‘what should be done about the problem?’ The answer to the first question requires ‘assessment’. This is a complex and time-consuming job which requires considerable expertise. One of the more regrettable consequences of the pursuit of self-sufficiency by local authorities is the unrestrained mushrooming of so-called ‘obseration and assessment centres’ all over the country. When the resources and constraints on assessment are evaluated, it becomes obvious that there cannot be many people who could begin to aspire to doing reasonable assessment. Of course, there are levels of assessment. In a sense each parent engages in assessment right from day one, but my concern here is professional assessment which lays down the ground plan of what the problems are in a rather more internally validated way. If the answer to ‘what?’ is difficult to provide, that to ‘how’ is even more so. In the research available on children and their disorders much can be discovered on description and diagnosis of problems, but precious little on what should actually be done with them. |
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