The Place of the Mentally Handicapped Child in Society

th ? AR Sir,?There has grown up a body of law in ls country with regard to the care and education ^ Mentally handicapped children based upon the ^sumption that there are three categories of udren: normal, educationally subnormal, and mentally defective. All who have had anything to do with the cateones regarded as subnormal will know from Perience that the position is far from satisfactory. th'C many thousands of children under tinf s^s^em are left" out in the cold " may at various tn,s be attributed to the war, to pre-war neglect, But ik building and staffing facilities and so on. att + underlying cause would appear to be the rtude that these children are not worth spending oney on because they are " ineducable " and will any case not be able to " plough back " into the Jpniunal coffer what has been spent on them, re. purP?se of this letter is to submit a case for ?j,, grouping the children on more realistic lines. e horizontal division between the " normal and the " subnormal" ignores more important vertical divisions. There are three categories of people?normal, physically handicapped and psychologically sick. Within these divisions, people may be of high, medium and low intelligence, but their actual performance is determined not just by immutable intelligence quotients, but by the accidental or environmental influences of their physical and mental health. Visiting Special Schools, Occupation Centres and Institutions, one can see that there are many children who do not fit tidily into the environment. There is a great need for residential hostels, for instance, for children who are so severely maladjusted or deranged that they are unable to take