Mentally Handicapped Children

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 18 February 1966.

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Photo of Mr William Hamling Mr William Hamling , Woolwich West 12:00, 18 February 1966

I beg to move, That this House is of the opinion that responsibility for the education and training of all mentally handicapped children should be transferred from the Ministry of Health to the Department of Education and Science; that improved educational opportunities are the key to the proper development of these children; that their subsequent training and employment under sheltered conditions, or where possible in open industry, should be the responsibility of the Ministry of Labour; and that the Government should take powers to ensure that facilities for them should conform to a minimum standard not lower than that obtaining in the best authorities. I consider it a great honour and good fortune to have this opportunity of moving a Private Member's Motion so soon after having had the opportunity, about eight months ago, of moving a similar Motion about the supply of teachers. I consider that this subject is of equal importance and, in many respects, of even greater urgency, because of the disabilities of the children concerned and the lack of opportunities for them. I am very gratified to know that so many right hon. and hon. Members have expressed an interest in the subject and I am particularly gratified to see the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Sir E. Boyle) on the Opposition Front Bench. I know that in order to be present today he had to cancel a very important engagement in Oxford.

All the House knows my interest in education. I have taught in a variety of establishments. I taught backward children for a number of years and I have always had an interest in the unloved and the uncared for. So often backward children are just that. We know their potential and we know that they have the capacity to make good citizens, good mothers or good fathers, if given a chance. The same can be said of many mentally handicapped children if they are given the opportunity of training and education. When I was teaching children like this some of my friends used to tease me about my enthusiasm and say, "Bill, you think all your geese are swans". Some of them are swans, and even geese are useful.

Who are the children whom we are considering? We are not talking about the educationally subnormal, who are already the care of local education authorities and the Department of Education and Science. We are talking about those who are the care of the Ministry of Health and who are looked after by local health authorities. We do not know how many of them there are. There is a great need to find out more about mentally handicapped children, about the nature of their handicaps, for speedy diagnosis, for much more information than we now have.

The reason why we do not have this is that they are a forgotten group. I am sure that many people do not want to know about mentally handicapped children and meet them with suspicion and fear, and perhaps distaste. One of the purposes of the debate is to arouse public opinion on the subject and to excite the sympathy and imagination of the population about the needs of a very important group in our society, not only the children but their parents. We very readily accept physically handicapped children into our society. Blind or deaf children are accepted in our education system. They are not shunned and they are not rejected.

But I have a very vivid memory of the way in which working-class children, for example, used to treat mentally handicapped children when I was a boy living in Liverpool. There was a boy who lived down our street, near the south end of Liverpool's docks, Les Allen, who was much older than any of the other children but who was treated by them with tremendous cruelty. That used to be the pattern. Thank goodness, we have improved a lot in that respect. This boy lived a lonely and useless life, but how many children are there in our society today who are still living lonely and useless lives?

The contrast to this I met a fortnight ago when I visited a newly opened training centre in my London Borough of Woolwich, where I saw mentally handicapped children being taught by teachers with modern methods and being cared for. I saw the smiles on their faces. When they are cared for, they respond.

The Motion refers to Ministerial responsibility for mentally handicapped children. Some may ask why I seek to change that. The answer is that I regard this as a teaching problem and not simply a matter of care or welfare. I am reinforced in that by a report of a working party of paediatricians in the south-east metropolitan region. The report said: It is, we believe, unfortunate that the Royal Commission should have found it necessary to recommend the continued separation of administrative responsibility for the education of school age children according to 'educability,' and that the Mental Health Act should have accepted the recommendation. It is true that the word 'ineducable' is now administratively banned…. But nevertheless a division is to remain, even sharper than that which constitutes failure in the eleven-plus examination, between those children thought to be capable of being taught in a school, who remain the responsibility of the Ministry of Education and Local Education Authorities, and the others incapable of being in a school, who become the responsibility, as heretofore, of the Ministry of Health and Local Health Authorities. The report went on to deplore this arbitrary distinction and the rather illogical assumption that educationists know best how to teach children with intelligent quotients of about 50 or 55, but not below. This is an education problem.

There is another point to this, and that is that hospitals for the mentally deficient are the Cinderella of the system. We know about expenditure and costs, and I do not want to go into that in detail. I have spoken about the Ministry of Labour and its responsibility in this case. The Ministry is now responsible for industrial training, for bridging the gap between dependent childhood and adult independence.

These children, too, are in need of this help, except that their dependence goes much deeper than that of other children, and perhaps lasts longer. Many of them are capable, with educational training, of becoming independent when they grow up, of going out to work and living the life of a normal adult citizen. It is our job to see that they get whatever help they need to do this. Their parents will not always be behind them and many will be left to stand on their own feet.

I also mentioned the unequal provision which exists. It is universally known and recognised that there are some parts of the country where provision is fair—and I suppose that that is an adjective which knowledgeable people would accept—but that there are other areas where the provision is certainly less than fair, and in some cases almost nonexistent. What is the evidence of neglect?

There has recently been a report by the British Psychological Society which is dealt with in The Times Educational Supplement, not a paper I would recommend when it comes to comprehensive schools, but one whose evidence I will accept in this field. It has a headline: Isolation of the Mentally Subnormal. Isolation is the operative word. The article reads: The isolation from the main stream of education of schools in hospitals for the mentally subnormal and training centres is regretted by the society in a new report. Children in Hospitals for the Subnormal. There are few channels of communication between the staff of such centres and schools within the educational system, they say. There is little awareness of the relevant educational or psychological research, and what little systematic or experimental education there is may well suffer from the absence of guidance and concrete help that could be given by a knowledgeable headmaster, an interested and informed educational psychologist or inspector of schools. For these reasons the society advocates that these training centres and hospital schools should be brought within the framework of the local education authority and Department of Education.

There is an even longer report in my union journal, The Teacher. Union journals perform a great service. This report is headed: Poor facilities for the subnormal. I will read the first sentence: Alarming inadequacies in the educational and training facilities available to children in hospitals for the subnormal are revealed in a newly published report by the British Psychological Society. The other evidence will be found in the working party report to which I have referred. This report speaks of: …a wide variey of different and more or less specific disabilities, physical and mental, in these children. Psychologists are only now exploring the field of perceptual defect and their resulting difficulties in learning of comprehension and communication. We also think that the kind of change which has been taking place in education practice for young 'normal' children…ought to have very important repercussions on ideas of how to develop the capacities of 'damaged' children. These are essentially problems for educationists, and we think they will only receive genuine consideration in so far as this is recognised… There is other evidence in the report and I would commend it to hon. Members. There has also been a report, by an expert, published by the Fabian Society. It is known as "The Mental Health Services". I would commend this, too, to the House, particularly that part of it dealing with children and hospital educational facilities.

I want to remove any impression from the mind of my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary that I am in any way criticising his Ministry. This is a Friday and I am always benevolent on Fridays. This is rather an indictment of our community. It is a criticism of the fact that the community does not approach this subject with urgency. In my own part of London a meeting was held of parents from a grammar school which was to be incorporated in a new comprehensive school. Over 300 parents turned up and wide publicity was given to the meeting and to some of the criticisms. What publicity is given to this problem? How many meetings attended by well over 300 people, noted by local and national Press, are ever held to discuss the urgency of this problem? This is a matter of public responsibility.

So often we say, "This is up to the Ministry". This is up to society, not the Ministry. It is an indictment of our community that we do not care. One of my colleagues, who, unfortunately, cannot be present today, sent me a letter detailing a case in his constituency, illustrating the gap in the provisions for these children. The letter told of a child who went to a good school until the age of 15 and then had to go home because there was nothing else. Instead of maintaining his improvement, he went back. My colleague said, "This is a mockery. One is showing the child that things can be done and then one is taking away the opportunities later". This is a result of the failure of the public to be aroused to the needs of these children.

There are relative shortages and there are absolute shortages. My attention was drawn to the problems of Service families who were brought up abroad. I understand that there are over 40,000 Service children in schools overseas. Many of these families have mentally handicapped children. The families are serving in places ranging from Hamburg to Hong Kong, but there are no facilities abroad for educating or training their mentally handicapped children. They find it very difficult to obtain places in residential hostels or hospital schools here. Quite clearly there is a need for residential hostels in every local education authority area.

There are further needs on the staff side for the training of teachers and instructors. I have looked at the Scott Report on this, and although the figures relate to 1959 I am certain that they have not materially altered since then. One of the most significant figures in any document on this subject is that of 2,149 members of staff in training centres, only five are university graduates.

I know that a great many people think that the possession of a university degree is some kind of technical or professional qualification. I do not share that view. I regard the possession of a university degree as evidence that the man or woman concerned has had a higher education, and that is all. How many of those who have had a higher education find their way back to work in this field? The obvious answer is, "Very few"—people who are dedicated men and women. The leaven should be spread more evenly throughout the community. The leaven of higher education should extend as far as mentally handicapped children.

This may be a commentary on the English system of education. I do not know what it is in Scotland. It is recorded that 1,789 of these people have no stated academic qualifications. This is a very large number of people who are supposed to be engaged in an educational and training job. There are only 42 recognised teachers. I know that quite a lot of them—363—have the N.A.M.H. diploma. There are 64 nursing nurses, 102 mental nurses, and 69 nurses or assistant nurses. But a vast number of them have no professional qualification.

I do not think that we should overestimate the importance of professional qualifications. I started life as an un-certificated teacher. I always think that I learned the job of teaching as an un-certificated teacher and that anything I learned at university or in the university training department did not make me a better teacher. We used to say that the best teacher was the man or woman born to it. But qualifications are a very great help. Specialised training is of inestimable value to people who ultimately spend their lives doing this work.

We ask how many children are covered by the facilities. The answer is, by no means all. There are great gaps. I ask in the Motion that more teachers, not instructors, should be trained for this work. To my mind, a teacher is somebody who is interested in the child as a person and not simply in teaching him or her a skill, someone who will have sympathy, imagination and affection. It is people, of this sort that we want to come into this work, people who are interested in social education and in teaching the whole boy or the whole girl.

There is a great need for research into the methods of teaching mentally handicapped children. A fortnight ago I saw the exciting work which is going on in Greenwich. That was one of the happiest mornings of my life as a teacher. It was a tremendous experience.

When it comes to salaries, people who teach in schools for mentally handicapped children should be treated no less worthily than ordinary teachers. They should certainly be paid the Burnham scale plus for their specialist training and specialist work.

One question which has struck me over the years in dealing with mentally handicapped people, and, indeed, physically handicapped people, is whether they should be cared for at all. I am sure that there are some people who think that they are a great burden on the community and that we should opt out of our social responsibility for them because they are a great burden. People like that should stand up and be counted.

As an undergraduate I took part in a lot of debates. I remember going to Aberyslwyth—the only time that I have ever visited the town—to take part in a debate on the sterilisation of the unfit. I led for the opposition. Somebody said, "You know where you stand, don't you?". The question which I remember asking in that debate was: who decides who is unfit, and who decides who should be sterilised? Who decides who is unfit to take his place in our community on equal terms with the rest of us? How unfit does a person have to be? We know what happened in Germany in the 1930s, when it was said, "Do away with the socially unfit".

This House, and this nation, reject that conception. We are a Christian and humanist society which believes that all God's children should be taken care of, that all of them should have a fair chance and that there should be no first-class and second class tickets in our society. We care for them all. Then let us do the job properly and not in a niggardly spirit. I am reminded of the cynics' decalogue, "That shalt not kill—but needst not strive officiously to keep alive". This is the way in which our society is behaving too often in this field. We must not kill, but we do not do very much to help these people to lead worth-while lives—or the parents, the brave souls who cope so often with impossible situations and who are liable themselves to physical, psychological and moral breakdown. We owe a social duty to them, too.