Reflections on Problems Faced by Interdisciplinary Staffs in Residential Schools for Maladjusted Children

In this paper some thoughts concerning problems faced by professional staffs employed in (what seems to be) the typical residential school for the education of the maladjusted child in the London area, are presented. Two divergent tendencies are focused on: one, the tendency on the part of these professionals to acknowledge that the problems posed for them by these schools are essentially new problems—problems which have not yet been successfully resolved—and to attempt, actively, to come to grips with them; the other, the tendency on their part to retreat from this kind of acknowledgment and from the anxiety it arouses.

We owe our acquaintance with the schools to our being (collectively) employed in three of them as child psychotherapists, and to discussions we have had with colleagues employed in a number of others. Though for the sake of simplicity only the residential school is discussed, we believe the views presented here can, with appropriate modification, be readily extended to the non-residential school for the education of the maladjusted child (Jackson, 1970) as well. [For an excellent general survey of the subject, as well as a substantial bibliography, see Beedell (1970). In this journal, for articles dealing with the problems posed by treatment of children in residential settings, see Folkart (1964, 1967) and MacCarthy (1966).]

The schools under discussion are multidisciplinary endeavours. Their staffs are made up by three disciplines: (1) the teaching staff, which includes the headmaster or headmistress, his or her deputy and the teachers; (2) the psychiatric team, which includes a psychiatrist and one or more educational psychologists, child psychotherapists and psychiatric social workers, and (3) the house-staff, which includes a domestic bursar and a number of house mothers and fathers. In each school, the headmaster or headmistress is the person principally in authority.

The children in residence, typically have background