Abstract
This chapter examines the impact of child guidance, a form of preventive mental healthcare for young people, on debates around deinstitutionalisation in post-war Britain. Child guidance emphasised the centrality of the biological family to successful child-rearing and, consequently, the need to avoid placing children in large-scale institutions. The latter were deemed impersonal and uncaring and thus not in a position to provide the emotional and psychological bonding necessary for healthy mental development. One of the most prominent advocates of this argument was the psychiatrist John Bowlby, famous worldwide for attachment theory. However, the child guidance approach did not go unchallenged and this partially undermined arguments in favour of deinstitutionalisation.
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Notes
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Henderson and Gillespie’s Textbook of Psychiatry (revised by I. R.C. Batchelor) (1969) 10th edn (London: Oxford University Press), pp. 473, 479–80.
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Ibid., p. 483.
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J. Bowlby (1953) The Roots of Parenthood (London: National Children’s Home), pp. 11–13.
- 14.
For a recent discussion, Thomson, Lost Freedom, ch. 3.
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- 17.
Wellcome, SAMIN/A/2/2, Minutes of NAMH Council, 18 April 1958, ‘Report from General Secretary’, p. 4.
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- 19.
Stewart, Child Guidance, chs 6, 9. Also, Thomson, Lost Freedom, ch. 3.
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The Home Department and the Ministry of Education, Report of the Care of Children Committee, p. 139.
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J. Bowlby (1952) Maternal Care and Mental Health, 2nd edn (Geneva: World Health Organization), pp. 11–12, 68.
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J. Bowlby (1953) Child Care and the Growth of Love (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books), pp. 101–2 and passim.
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K. Jones (1999) Taming the Troublesome Child: American Families, Child Guidance, and the Limits of Psychiatric Authority (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), p. 117.
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J. Bowlby (1953) The Roots of Parenthood (London: National Children’s Home), p. 16.
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H. Gillespie (1955) ‘Psychiatric Problems of Children Under Five Years’, Mother and Child, 25:11, 272–74.
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Secretary of State for the Home Department et al., Report of the Committee on Local Authority and Allied Personal Services, pp. 56–58.
- 32.
Welshman, ‘Rhetoric and Reality’, p. 213.
- 33.
See further Stewart, Child Guidance.
- 34.
J. Bowlby (1958) Can I Leave My Baby? (London: National Association for Mental Health), pp. 6–7.
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Hendrick, Child Welfare, p. 139.
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K. Mawhood and I. Elkan (1955) ‘World Child Welfare Congress, Zagreb’, British Journal of Psychiatric Social Work, 3:1, 37–38.
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A. V. Neale (1961) ‘Integration’ in National Association for Mental Health, Emerging Patterns for the Mental Health Services and the Public (London: NAMH), pp. 13, 18.
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Stewart, Child Guidance, passim.
- 39.
Hendrick, Child Welfare, p. 138.
- 40.
Secretary of State for the Home Department et al., Report of the Committee on Local Authority and Allied Personal Services, pp. 107–108.
- 41.
The Home Department and the Ministry of Education, Report of the Care of Children Committee, p. 27, Table IV.
- 42.
Secretary of State for the Home Department et al., Report of the Committee on Local Authority and Allied Personal Services, p. 52.
- 43.
Thomson, Lost Freedom, p. 93.
- 44.
For child welfare policy under the Conservatives in the late twentieth century, Hendrick, Child Welfare, ch. 5.
- 45.
Stewart, Child Guidance, p. 183.
- 46.
Thomson, Lost Freedom, p. 94.
- 47.
Secretary of State for the Home Department et al., Report of the Committee on Local Authority and Allied Personal Services, chs 12, 13.
- 48.
J. Welshman (2013) Underclass: A History of the Excluded, 2nd edn (London: Bloomsbury Academic), ch. 6.
- 49.
Wellcome, SAMIN/B/64, Miss P. Parsloe (1967) ‘Working with Families Who Do Not Attend a Clinic’ in National Association for Mental Health, Child Guidance from Within: Reactions to New Pressures: Papers Given at the 23rd Child Guidance Inter-Clinic Conference, 1967 (London: NAMH), pp. 41–52.
- 50.
Hendrick, Child Welfare, pp. 163–64.
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Stewart, J. (2016). Child Guidance and Deinstitutionalisation in Post-War Britain. In: Kritsotaki, D., Long, V., Smith, M. (eds) Deinstitutionalisation and After. Mental Health in Historical Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45360-6_9
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