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Although there is an extensive network of educational facilities for the disturbed school-age child, it has been increasingly felt that there is a role for the Day Centre or Hospital where psychiatric care can be given to patients for several hours daily. Units for children vary in aims and methods but all attempt to meet a need met neither by ordinary out-patient or child guidance clinics nor by the very limited in-patient facilities available, nor by special school facilities.
Connell (1961) in his description of a day hospital for children stressed the importance of the continuous availability of psychiatric staff and medical resources and a flexible approach to the child's and the family's needs.
In the area of the pre-school child, although there are strident demands for nursery schools or play-groups to help to meet early educational and social needs, facilities to deal with disturbance in the young child and his family are few. Frommer (1967) has suggested that a special day centre for the treatment of a variety of psychiatric and chronic medical problems in pre-school children may not only be more economical but even preferable to individual treatment.
Other centres such as the Child Development Centre in New York (Landauer 1966) combine attendance at a therapeutic nursery, with individual or group therapy for parents. Anna Freud (1966) has described the interaction of the Hampstead Child Therapy Course and Clinic with the pre-nursery groups, and nursery schools for blind and sighted children. Teuens (1966) described a therapeutic day nursery providing group work for a variety of children and finding that quite severely disturbed children may be helped.
Although children of all ages are seen in the Department of Psychological Medicine of The Hospital for Sick Children, our close relationship to the paediatric side of the Hospital, both in-patient and out-patient, results in our seeing a larger proportion of children unde