'Help for Wayward Children': Child Guidance in 1930s Australia

History of Education Review Emerald Article: "Help for wayward children": child guidance in 1930s Australia Katie Wright Article information: To cite this document: Katie Wright, (2012),""Help for wayward children": child guidance in 1930s Australia", History of Education Review, Vol. 41 Iss: 1 pp. 4 - 19 Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/08198691211235545 Downloaded on: 01-07-2012 References: This document contains references to 42 other documents To copy this document: [email protected] Access to this document was granted through an Emerald subscription provided by Emerald Author Access For Authors: If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service. Information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. 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The purpose of this article is to examine the introduction of child guidance in Australia against the backdrop of the international influences that shaped local developments. Design/methodology/approach – The article investigates the establishment of child guidance clinics in Melbourne and Sydney in the 1930s. In doing so, it explores the influence of American philanthropy, the promise of prevention that inspired the mental hygiene movement, and some of the difficulties faced in putting its child guidance ideals into practice in Australia. Findings – American philanthropy played an important role in the transnational carriage of ideas about mental hygiene and child guidance into Australia. However, it was state support of child guidance activities that proved critical to its establishment. In addition to institutional developments, what also emerges as important in the 1930s is the traction gained in the broader realm of ideas about “adjustment” and mental health, particularly in relation to the efficacy of early intervention and multidisciplinary approaches to treating problems of childhood. Originality/value – In tracing its early development, the article argues for the importance of understanding child guidance not only in terms of its administrative successes and failures, but also more broadly in terms of how early intervention as an influential mode of thought and practice took root internationally. Keywords Child guidance, Mental hygiene, Psychiatry, Psychology, Australia, Commonwealth fund, Carnegie Corporation Paper type Research paper In 1932, Kenneth Cunningham, founding director of the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) and a member of the Victorian Council for Mental Hygiene (VCMH), reported the results of an investigation into “Problem children in Melbourne schools” (Cunningham, 1932). The study, undertaken at the instigation of the VCMH and funded by ACER, sought to ascertain “the number of children who, in their mental disabilities, in their educational attainments, in their behaviour, or in their personal make-up, presented problems calling for expert examination and guidance” (ACER, 1931, p. 29). Gauging the number of so-called problem children was an important exercise for the newly formed Mental Hygiene Council, as one of its History of Education Review Vol. 41 No. 1, 2012 pp. 4-19 r Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0819-8691 DOI 10.1108/08198691211235545 Katie Wright is the recipient of an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship (DP0987299: “Educating the adolescent: an historical study of curriculum, counselling and citizenship, 1930s-70s”). Research for this article undertaken in the USA was also supported by an Australian Academy of the Humanities Travelling Fellowship (2008). An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia Workshop, “Philanthropy and public culture: the influence and legacies of the Carnegie Corporation of New York in Australia” (2010). For helpful comments and feedback, the author wishes to thank David Goodman, Barbara Kamler and Julie McLeod. founding objectives had been to oversee the establishment of a child guidance clinic in Victoria. The results of the study overseen by Cunningham supported the view of those associated with the mental hygiene movement in Australia that there was significant need and scope for such a venture. It was estimated that around 14 per cent, or some 22,000 children in the Melbourne metropolitan region, could be considered “problem” cases, that is, children who were suffering from “defects of personality, conduct disorders, mental retardation, educational defects, physical defects, and bad habits” (Cunningham, 1932, p. 85). Cunningham’s report was not the first to underscore the need for a child guidance clinic in Melbourne, organised along the lines of those developed in the USA in the 1920s for the diagnosis and treatment of mild behaviour and emotional problems in school-aged children[1]. Richard Berry, Professor of Anatomy and Dean of Medicine at the University of Melbourne, had furnished a report in 1929 that made a similar call (Berry, 1929). Berry (1929) was an enthusiastic promoter of mental hygiene and argued that the establishment of such a clinic was “urgently wanted” and “long overdue” (p. 30). Reflecting a somewhat broader vision than Cunningham’s later focus on problem children, it was Berry’s view that the chief function of such a clinic should be directed towards investigating the phenomena of child development in both normal and abnormal children, and that this work should be supplemented with the treatment of physical and mental problems using “the best of available medical, educational, and psychological knowledge” (Berry, 1929, p. 31). That child guidance might offer parents some expert advice in a period of rapid social change was another important aspect. For it was Berry’s view that the changing attitudes of the young towards religion, morality, sex, discipline and the like, had left parents “somewhat bewildered” (Berry, 1929, p. 30). Like others associated with the mental hygiene movement, Berry’s enthusiasm for child guidance was underpinned by a belief in the utility of scientific expertise, particularly that of the human sciences. In making his case for the importance of the scientific study of the child and the value of early intervention in problem cases, Berry declared that “the children of to-day are the real wealth of the nation”. He went on to ask, somewhat rhetorically: “Is, then, their future to depend on the unverified opinions of an amateur, superficial, and bungling decade, or is it to be the product of scientific research and knowledge?” (Berry, 1929, p. 31; see also, The Argus, 1929). Studying children, and identifying and treating psychological and behavioural problems early, promised significant benefits for a modernising Australia. The preclusion of juvenile delinquency and the prevention of personal and social “maladjustment” was one dimension. Another involved not just drawing on the best available scientific knowledge from other parts of the world, but importantly, contributing to its production. By foregrounding the place of child study, and broadly disseminating research findings, Berry envisaged the work of child guidance in Melbourne as extending across Australia and influencing the world beyond. To date, the historiography of child guidance has focused predominantly on its development in the USA and on the role of the American philanthropic foundation, the Commonwealth Fund, as its major sponsor (Horn, 1989; Jones, 1999; Richardson, 1989). A small but growing body of scholarly work also documents its history in northern Europe, notably in Britain, where the Commonwealth Fund extended its sphere of influence beyond America through the funding of child guidance activities in England (Sampson, 1980; Stewart, 2009; Thom, 1992). This paper builds on and extends this literature by considering the origins of child guidance in Australia. “Help for wayward children” 5 HER 41,1 6 Further illuminating the transnational nature of the child guidance movement, it examines developments beyond the northern epicentre of the movement, and in doing so contributes to Australian historical studies of childhood and its expert management. Indeed, a key dimension of the history of child guidance in Australia as elsewhere, is that it was a movement marked by the transnational circulation of emerging ideas about preventative mental health, in the context of increasing anxieties about problems of childhood maladjustment. Transatlantic exchanges have been well documented, yet little attention has thus far been paid to the “traffic in ideas” that extended to more remote regions of the world, like Australia (McLeod and Wright, 2009). A related concern is the influence of American philanthropy, specifically its role in the development of child guidance outside the USA. A number of studies have shown how Commonwealth Fund activities shaped developments in Britain, drawing attention to the internationalist agenda of American foundations and also considering their interplay with local social reform efforts in the area of child mental health (Stewart, 2004, 2006b; Thom, 1992; Thomson, 1995). An examination of attempts to institutionalise child guidance in Australia offers another vantage point from which to assess the complex and far-reaching effects of American philanthropy. I argue that while the Commonwealth Fund’s influence in the antipodes was significant, it was largely indirect – insofar as it provided models to be emulated but not the resources to do so. Other American philanthropic foundations, however, played a more direct role. In the Australian context the Carnegie Corporation of New York provided important support for a range of key players and agencies associated with the fledgling child guidance movement. Although modest compared with the Commonwealth Fund’s support of child guidance elsewhere, I argue that Carnegie philanthropy was instrumental in the carriage into Australia of American models of mental hygiene for children, notably those associated with prevention and early intervention. Child guidance as a transnational movement In her history of child guidance in the USA, Margo Horn dates the emergence of the child guidance movement to 1922, when amid growing concerns about problems of juvenile delinquency and “mental disease”, the Commonwealth Fund financed the establishment of community mental health facilities for children and adolescents: so called child guidance clinics (Horn, 1989, p. 2). Child guidance was a key component of the Fund’s philanthropic programme of mental hygiene (Stevenson, 1934). It formed part of a broader preventative mental health strategy, in which children could be studied and treatment provided for emotional, psychological and behavioural problems in their early stages. Consequently, as Horn argues, the history of child guidance is intimately connected to the history of the Commonwealth Fund, and the direction its board of directors chose in forging its work in the areas of child welfare, public health and mental hygiene (Horn, 1989, p. ix). Founded in 1918 with an initial bequest of US$10 million from Anna Harkness, the Commonwealth Fund was established with freedom to choose its own direction, being charged only with the responsibility that it was “to do something for the welfare of mankind” (Commonwealth Fund, 1963, p. 4). In its first years, appropriations were made for a variety of purposes, but by the early 1920s it began to develop structured programmes, finding its niche in the area of public health with an emphasis on the mental and physical health of children. One of its first major initiatives in this area was the “Program for the Prevention of Delinquency”, which included the establishment of child guidance clinics, training of child guidance personnel and studies of children and problems of childhood. The Fund’s initial focus on delinquency, however, quickly moved to that of the “normal” child exhibiting mild behaviour and emotional troubles. Evidently, the treatment of delinquents could only be of limited effectiveness. The real promise was in prevention, before maladjustment could manifest itself in antisocial or criminal behaviour and serious disorders of conduct (Horn, 1984). With this shift in focus, child guidance came to constitute a popular and significant element of the American mental hygiene movement. Both in the USA and elsewhere, support for mental hygiene reflected an enthusiastic embrace of the emerging knowledges and professional expertise of the human sciences, and optimism about their role in progressive social reform (Thomson, 1995). The child study and parent education movements both embraced and contributed to the reconfiguration of understandings of childhood, understandings which were, in turn, promoted by psychiatrists, psychologists and middle-class reformers alike. This involved a growing acceptance of the view that childhood was a period of psychological and emotional vulnerability and that modern scientific approaches to parenting were urgently needed. The rapid increase in child-rearing manuals in the 1920s reflected this, and involved not only the proffering of advice to anxious parents, but the emergence of new standards, which in turn created new anxieties (Schlossman, 1981; Stearns, 2003). Parents were warned that children who deviated from prescribed standards of normality were at risk of maladjustment. Hence, early intervention was important, indeed critical in order to circumvent major social and psychological problems later in life (Tyler, 1997). The theory and technique of child guidance provided an important means by which emerging expertise in the area of child development could be marshalled to tackle what appeared to be increasingly intractable social problems: first that of juvenile delinquency and, soon after, that of mental illness. Closely associated with the development of child guidance was a range of philanthropic sponsored activities designed to create a greater understanding of childhood as well as promote mental health in children of all ages, from preschool to adolescence. Scientific research on child development and parent education, for example, was a key focus of the Laura Spellman Rockefeller Memorial, which funded child study institutes in the USA in the 1920s and 1930s (Richardson, 1989). Many of these institutes had connections to day nurseries and nursery schools, which themselves were an important site of childhood intervention, providing the new experts of childhood with a cohort of preschool-aged children for the scientific study, and children with an environment conducive to optimal socialisation and normal development. Teachers in nursery schools commonly took courses in psychology, child study and mental hygiene, and some day nurseries appointed psychiatrists and social workers, a development attributed to the success of the child guidance clinics set up by the Commonwealth Fund (Wrigley, 1990, p. 298; Richardson, 1989, p. 100; Stevenson, 1934, p. 44). While the mental hygiene movement encompassed a diverse range of activities, child guidance, according to the director of the Commonwealth Fund’s Division of Community Clinics, George Stevenson, represented “a reasonably unified approach to the behavior problems of children” (Stevenson, 1934, p. vi). Clinics were both places of research and centres for treatment, where the study of problems of children and their clinical management was undertaken by a team comprising a psychiatrist, a psychologist and at least one – usually psychoanalytically trained – social worker. Certainly, there were variations between clinics – in terms of technical procedure, the “Help for wayward children” 7 HER 41,1 8 provision of training for child guidance personnel and the use of external professional expertise, such as a paediatrician. Nevertheless, the defining feature of the child guidance model was that it was based on this threefold multidisciplinary clinical team, which meant that a comprehensive picture of the child could be ascertained from a psycho-medical, psychological and social standpoint (Cook, 1944; Stevenson, 1934). Schools, social agencies, parents and courts were the chief instigators for the assessment of a child, and selected “cases” were typically of “normal” intelligence and exhibiting behaviour problems or problems of educational or emotional adjustment. Following receipt of a referral or request for an appointment, staff of the clinic, usually the social worker, would elicit further information about the child whereupon the clinic staff would decide whether the child should be accepted for diagnosis and, if necessary, treatment. For some children contact with the clinic was limited to simple diagnostic study. An educational problem, for example, might be resolved with a diagnosis of a physical impairment, such as a vision problem. The “full service” of the clinic, by contrast, involved drawing on the expertise of each child guidance specialist. In such cases, the psychiatrist would conduct a physical examination and interview the child to gain an insight into emotional problems. The psychologist would administer psychological tests and the social worker would attempt to understand the underlying social factors, generally through contact with the child’s family and school, as well as through referring social agencies. Treatment would then consist of psychotherapy, which often involved both the child and the parents, for as Stevenson noted, “usually the more toxic factors in the situation are found in the adult environment” (Stevenson, 1934, p. 58). Where necessary, environmental “adjustments”, such as changes in school placement, physical regime and recreational activities, would also be made. In the USA, the Commonwealth Fund’s child guidance activities constituted a broad programme through a network of associated agencies. Clinics were established across the country under the auspices of the National Committee for Mental Hygiene and funded for an initial “demonstration” period; a Bureau of Child Guidance was set up at the New York School of Social Work for the examination and treatment of children and the training of psychiatric social workers; and the Public Education Association of New York coordinated a programme of visiting teachers, essentially school social workers who identified problem children and referred them to clinics (Horn, 1989). By the time the Commonwealth Fund withdrew direct support for mental hygiene programmes in the USA, child guidance was well established[2]. In 1933, 11 years after the eight original demonstration clinics were set up, 35 were in operation across the country, and a decade later this number had reached 60 (Horn, 1989, p. 58). In addition, there were hundreds of psychiatric clinics for children operating along child guidance lines, with a threefold staff of psychiatrist, psychologist and social worker (Witmer, 1940). It was not only in the USA, however, that the Commonwealth Fund was instrumental to the establishment of child guidance. Indeed, the programmes it funded shaped ideas and practices in many western countries, not least in Britain, where in the late 1920s it financed and oversaw child guidance activities based on the American model (Stewart, 2004, 2006b). “The English Mental Hygiene Program” began in 1927 and was supported by the Commonwealth Fund for 20 years. It involved the establishment of a child guidance clinic in London, which also served as a training centre for social workers, financial support for a mental health course at the London School of Economics and aid for the Child Guidance Council, which was something of an educative agency for mental hygiene and preventative psychiatry (Scoville, n.d.). Soon after the London clinic opened, others were set up along similar lines. By 1932, the Child Guidance Council had assisted with the establishment of clinics in Liverpool, Glasgow and Birmingham, and by 1936 there were 18 clinics in connection with it, most of which had been given assistance in the form of the loan of a psychiatric social worker for the first year or two of operation[3]. Both in Britain and the USA, support of the Commonwealth Fund was critical to the coordinated efforts to institutionalise child guidance, which as we shall see, was missing in Australia. The programmes it designed reflected recognition of the clinical, educational and organisational elements needed to successfully establish a new multidisciplinary model of mental health service provision for young people. Professional education and training was critical. In fact the Fund’s support of the London clinic was conditional upon it acting as a research centre and training facility for psychiatric social workers. Public education, or “propaganda” as it was referred to, also formed an important component, and this in turn was coordinated through committees charged with responsibility for setting standards and disseminating information about the utility of early intervention for problems of maladjustment. In addition to the coordinated efforts of the Commonwealth Fund to develop and forge links with key players and agencies concerned with mental hygiene, its division of publications also played an important role in facilitating the dissemination of knowledge of child guidance, not only within the USA and Britain, but also internationally. The international flourishing of ideas about mental hygiene and child guidance formed part of the broader transnational traffic in ideas about social welfare and public policy during the interwar period[4]. Certainly, there were elements of cultural imperialism. As Matthew Thomson argues, international attempts at spreading the mental hygiene message were in reality predominantly American. Yet there were also other factors at play, not least of which were professionalising activities of mental health workers who, as Thomson notes, “were both part of an international psychiatric community yet dependent on national patronage for their personal success” (Thomson, 1995, p. 284). Exporting American ideas of mental hygiene through child guidance was, consequently, a difficult and sometimes fraught enterprise. As John Stewart has shown, the Commonwealth Fund found its British operations “immensely frustrating” as there was often a discord between its views and directions taken in England (Stewart, 2004). According to Thomson, the Commonwealth Fund’s attempt to institute the American model of child guidance in Britain was thus only partially successful. A distinctly professionalised US form of child guidance did emerge, but alongside it developed what Thomson notes was “a larger corps of less professionalised, often voluntary, mental health workers” (Thomson, 1995, p. 296). Certainly US practices in general, and the Commonwealth Fund model in particular, were highly influential in Britain. But what the British case makes clear is that it was not simply a matter of American expertise transported, for what eventuated from the traffic in ideas, in finance and in personnel across the Atlantic was a model of practice that drew on international expertise but was distinctly shaped by local concerns. Something of a similar situation occurs in Australia. However, what most sharply distinguishes Australian developments from those in America and Britain is that Australia never benefited from the kind of well-financed philanthropic support which enabled the execution of a coordinated and targeted social reform agenda. “Help for wayward children” 9 HER 41,1 10 While attempts were made to secure Commonwealth Fund support, Australian appeals were declined. It may have been a case of bad timing; for by the time Australian applications were made the Fund was progressively withdrawing support for what had already become a well-established field elsewhere. It did, however, provide assistance to a number of Australians in the form of information about establishing and organising clinics, and with the arrangement of visits to clinics in the USA[5]. Through these activities, and through its sponsorship of the child guidance movement more broadly, the Commonwealth Fund’s influence was thus highly significant. Indeed it provided the foundational ideas and models for practice that shaped the establishment of child guidance in Australia. Yet the influence of American philanthropy in Australia was not limited to the realm of ideas and the activities of the Commonwealth Fund. Through its Commonwealth programme and through ACER, the Carnegie Corporation provided financial support for clinical practice and professional training, and funded research and publications related to child guidance, as well as travel grants to Australian educators and psychologists who were exposed to international child guidance practices. The Victorian Vocational and Child Guidance Centre (VVCGC) The founding in the early 1930s of state-based Mental Hygiene Councils was pivotal to the development of child guidance in Australia. These associations, whose members included prominent educationalists, doctors, psychologists and social reformers, provided the organisational platform from which the principles of child guidance could be disseminated and put into practice[6]. While there had long been enthusiasm about the promise of child guidance, it was the founding of the VCMH that set in train the establishment of the first child guidance clinic in Melbourne, set up along the lines of the Commonwealth Fund clinics in the USA. By this time, the international child guidance movement had shifted from a concern with solving problems of delinquency among poor urban youth, to an ostensibly medical endeavour in which mild behaviour problems and children’s emotional and psychological “adjustment” became the target of intervention under a model of preventative psychiatry. A primary objective of the VCMH was to oversee the establishment of a clinic that would provide treatment for children who were deemed “neurotic”, “hyperactive”, “hypokinetic”, “seclusive”, “emotional”, “egocentric” or in some way “inadequate” (Cunningham, 1932, p. 78). The Council was concerned about the extent of emotional and psychological problems in children and believed, furthermore, that the problem was not limited to particular sectors of the community. Indeed, as Cunningham noted, while the “less favoured homes and districts have a larger proportion of problem cases, they have by no means a monopoly of them” (Cunningham, 1932, p. 85). The response of teachers in the 14 schools, kindergartens and institutions visited during the 1931 joint ACER and VCMH investigation into the need for a child guidance clinic in Victoria indicated that abnormalities of physical, mental, educational, emotional and social development were common among the city’s youth. Thus there appeared to be significant need and scope for at least one child guidance clinic in Melbourne. The institution established on the basis of Cunningham’s study was the VVCGC. The decision to establish a centre that would offer both child guidance and vocational guidance arose from a coalescence of the interests and objectives of the VCMH with those of the Victorian Vocational Guidance Association (VVGA). In 1930, as the VVGA was preparing for the establishment of a vocational guidance bureau, it was discovered that the Council for Mental Hygiene was making similar plans, albeit in relation to child guidance. Members of the VVGA and the VCMH consequently determined there was sufficient commonality in objectives to justify cooperation (VCMH, 1931). August 1932 thus saw the establishment of a centre in Melbourne, where both child guidance and vocational guidance were available. The initial appointments of the Board of Management included a Melbourne psychiatrist, Dr N.A. Albiston, a psychologist from Sydney, R.K. Whately, and a social worker from Western Australia, Constance Moffit, all of whom had completed postgraduate work overseas, and were presumably acquainted with child guidance practices elsewhere. In a somewhat divergent approach to the organisation of clinics in the USA and Britain, it was the psychologist, Whately, who assumed the role of clinic director[7]. The VVCGC straddled a space, or at least aspired to, between two major forms of guidance that had gained popularity throughout the Anglo-American world during the 1920s. This confluence was unusual, reflecting something of a departure from the typical approach abroad, which saw child guidance and vocational guidance as largely separate enterprises. Yet I would argue that bringing together the problem of choosing a suitable vocation and problems of emotional or psychological “adjustment” nevertheless reflected the philosophy of the broader guidance movement; namely, the promise of early intervention and necessity of expert assistance. Indeed the rationale for the VVCGC’s establishment as a joint venture was based on the view that there were many points at which child guidance and vocational guidance overlapped, and that much would be gained by bringing these two forms of guidance into closer association. Those involved with its establishment argued that childhood maladjustment was more common than generally believed, and that the choosing of future careers represented an even wider problem (VCMH, 1931). This position, I argue, is significant on a number of fronts. It reflects an emerging view that problems of psychological, educational and vocational “adjustment” were often interrelated. Further, it posits that such problems could be measured along a continuum, from the minor to the major, and if identified at an early stage, could be corrected. Perhaps most significantly, though, it points to the ways in which early intervention as a mode of thought gained currency in disparate domains – from psychological and emotional life to the school and the workplace. It was the view of the VCMH that “many of the social and individual maladjustments of adult life have their origin in childhood [and] unless corrected during this period they may be difficult or impossible to deal with at a later stage” (VCMH, 1931, p. 10). The VVCGC therefore intended to provide facilities for the early recognition of disorders of conduct, emotional disturbances, educational retardation, as well as recognition of especially gifted children. Of the first 135 cases investigated, 30 were classified as primarily constituting behaviour problems. A small minority, just nine people, came to the Centre seeking both vocational and child guidance, while 15 of the 96 people presenting for vocational or educational guidance were referred to the Centre psychiatrist for examination and treatment of an emotional maladjustment. In total, 54 cases were classified as requiring the full complement of the child guidance team. In these cases, Whately administered psychometric tests, Albiston investigated the child’s physical and emotional condition, and Moffit visited the child’s school or home, or both when deemed warranted. Reports were issued by Albiston. Typical of the problems identified were “scholastic backwardness”, disciplinary problems, truancy and lack of interest in school. Feeling of inferiority, absentmindedness, lack of enthusiasm and emotional drive, “shut in” personality, lying, stealing, sex problems, “Help for wayward children” 11 HER 41,1 12 thumb sucking and swearing were among a range of other problems that staff at the Centre sought to treat[8]. Notwithstanding its wide-ranging work, the VVCGC was, in many respects, a far cry from the kind of institution envisaged by Berry several years earlier. Little or no research was conducted, and despite fears about widespread childhood maladjustment, it was vocational guidance rather than child guidance that constituted the greater part of the Centre’s activities. After two years of operation, over 300 young people had been examined at the Centre, and hundreds more in schools. The average age was around 16 years, mostly male, and mostly seeking vocational guidance[9]. The child guidance component of the VVCGC had initially followed the typical configuration of psychiatrist, psychologist and social worker, but by 1934, the services of the Centre’s social worker had been dispensed with due to financial constraints (see footnote 9, p. 12). Whately’s reports indicate that the Board of Management was hopeful that the full complement of the child guidance team could be reinstated when finances permitted. The fee-for-service model, however, proved impossible to sustain in the bleak economic climate of the early to mid-1930s. The vocational aspect, by contrast, was far more amenable to rationalisation, with psychometric assessment enabling career advice to be proffered to large numbers of adolescents without the need for extensive psychiatric “interviews” or the community liaison carried out by the social worker. Consequently, despite the aspirations of supporters of the mental hygiene movement, the VVCGC failed to emulate the American model of child guidance. While its vocational guidance service prospered, by 1936 it ceased its child guidance work, dissolved its association with the VCMH, and became, simply, the Victorian Vocational Guidance Centre. The collapse of child guidance in Melbourne reflected the difficulties faced by the movement in Australia more generally. One major problem was that of public perception. At a time in which psychological and psychiatric approaches to child management were still nascent, and indeed regarded with suspicion by many, garnering support for clinical intervention proved difficult. Grasping the complexities of its purpose was, evidently, problematic even for some of its apparent supporters. According to Dr A.R. Phillips, psychiatrist at Travancore Development Centre, the VVCGC suffered an early blow from which it never fully recovered when a politician delivering the inaugural speech appeared to be “under the impression that he was opening a clinic for mental defectives” (Phillips, 1946a, p. 10)[10]. Although Phillips does not name the politician, it was, presumably, none less than the Premier of Victoria, Sir Stanley Argyle, who presided over the official opening of the Centre early in October 1932 (The Argus, 1932b). The primary difficulty, however, faced by the VVCGC was its failure to secure the extent of financial support required to fund a costly multidisciplinary clinical team for the provision of child guidance. From the outset it was plagued by financial concerns. Despite attracting progressively more clients, it continued to rely on the aid of private subscribers and grants from ACER[11]. While a number of small bequests and grants kept it solvent for several years, the costs of providing child guidance services were not met by the income it generated. Unlike the early clinics established in the USA, it benefited from neither major start-up funding, nor significant ancillary support, fatally hampering the attempt to implement the VCMH’s vision for child guidance in Melbourne. Child guidance in Sydney Developments in Sydney provide an interesting point of comparison. While philanthropic sponsorship was similarly not secured, child guidance did find significant support from the NSW state government. In 1936 a child guidance clinic was established as part of the School Medical Service. Three years later, a second clinic began and by the mid-1950s there were five clinics operating under the auspices of the Education Department in that state[12]. In contrast to the independent Melbourne centre, which needed to be self-supporting, the Sydney clinic would only accept children as patients if parents or guardians were unable to meet the cost of specialised clinical services that could be obtained elsewhere. Following the establishment of the first clinic, head teachers were asked to identify children who showed “nervous symptoms”, such as morbid fears, obsessions and sleep disturbances, those suffering from “personality disorders” such as shyness, unsociability, disobedience, over-activity and so on, and those exhibiting “behaviour disorders”, like tantrums, truancy, lying, stealing and sex difficulties (Burton, 1939). During the period January 1937 to June 1938, over 1,000 children were referred to the clinic. Around half of the clinic’s “clients” were referred by their school (through teachers, inspectors and school counsellors), around a quarter came from the child welfare department, and the remainder were referred by the children’s court or came via direct application by parents (Burton, 1939, p. 20). Parents or guardians of children identified by schools or other social agencies as potentially in need of child guidance were notified by way of a letter from the clinic with a tentative appointment scheduled[13]. Children assessed at the clinic would typically receive a medical examination and psychological analysis. The psychiatrist would first interview the parent or guardian – usually the mother – and gain from her a full family history to supplement the report received from the school. While the mother was with the psychiatrist, the child would be interviewed by the psychologist and would be asked to complete a Binet intelligence test. The child then would see the psychiatrist, who would at that time interview him or her and perform a physical examination. After a brief consultation between the psychiatrist and the psychologist, the psychiatrist would again talk to the parent. Case conferences were held and the social worker would visit the school and/or the home. If educational difficulties appeared to be the problem, the psychologist would administer further testing. If there was an emotional maladjustment needing treatment, the psychiatrist would begin therapy. Following examination of the child, a report would be furnished to the Principal of their school (Burton, 1939). The report would include description of any physical “defects”, the “mental age” of the child, along with suggestions for treatment (see footnote 13). The positioning of child guidance within the Education Department was critical to its success in NSW in a number of ways. First, it meant that a greater number of children with a broader range of problems came under the purview of clinicians than in the case of an independent clinic like the VVCGC, or clinics attached to hospitals and children’s courts which were primarily concerned with psychiatric cases and problems of delinquency. Second, it facilitated the liaising of clinicians with staff in other areas of the department, including medical officers, staff of special schools, truancy and probation officers, teachers, principals, inspectors and school counsellors. The structural organisation of child guidance in NSW thus provided both an important measure of legitimacy, and perhaps more significantly, sustained financial support. In Melbourne, the director of the VVCGC needed to engage from the outset in a media and public relations campaign in order to garner support for his Centre. The NSW Education Department clinic, by contrast, had the luxury of making a quieter entry into the field, taking no steps to make public its activities and in fact initially “Help for wayward children” 13 HER 41,1 14 withholding information from reporters for fear that there would be an “overflow of cases” (Burton, 1939, p. 18). The psychologist at that clinic, Nancy Burton, was later critical of the departmental directive prohibiting publicity. She argued that it was a short-sighted policy and that child guidance would have been better served if reporters had been encouraged and professional expertise disseminated by experienced clinicians (Burton, 1939, p. 31). Nevertheless, the Education Department’s implementation of child guidance was clearly successful. Burton herself noted that its association with the medical branch gave child guidance a considerable degree of prestige. Unlike the Melbourne centre, which needed to be self-funding, the Education Department met the cost of employing a psychiatrist, psychologist and social worker. The Sydney clinic was therefore in a far better position to emulate the consolidated approach of the American child guidance model. Still, as with the ill-fated Melbourne clinic, the NSW Education Department clinics failed to undertake research-related activities during the 1930s and practitioners were, moreover, acutely aware of their isolation and the limitations that their lack of specialised education and training in the field posed (Burton, 1939, p. 34). Burton, for example, was keen to further her clinical knowledge and experience with study and work in the USA. After being declined a leave of absence to do so, she resigned her post at the Child Guidance Clinic in Sydney and departed in February 1939 for the USA (Sydney Morning Herald, 1939). Burton’s decision to study abroad was not unusual; many Australian psychologists undertook further education in Britain and America (Taft, 1982, p. 31). While some, like Burton, pursued education opportunities independently, others, usually young men further advanced in their careers and considered likely to make a significant contribution in Australia, had access to financial support in the form of travel grants made available to Australians through the philanthropic activities of the Carnegie Corporation. The transnational movement of people and ideas, much of which was sponsored by Carnegie, was critical to the development of child guidance in Australia. Indeed travel grants offered an important means by which modern educational and psychological practices could be studied abroad and ideas brought home for implementation in Australia. An important means by which these ideas were subsequently disseminated in Australia was through the publishing of travel grant reports by ACER, which, as Michael White has noted, “publicised US ‘progressive’ developments as a challenge to Australian policy and practice” (White, 1997, p. 7). One beneficiary of a Carnegie travel Grant was Philip Halford Cook, a psychologist from Melbourne[14]. The grant enabled Cook to study child guidance in Britain and the USA in the late 1930s and into the early 1940s[15]. Cook’s study tour and subsequent enrolment at the University of Kansas culminated in a doctoral dissertation examining child guidance with special reference to Australian conditions (Cook, 1941). While this contribution – along with his previous work at the Travancore psychological clinic – positioned him to take a leading child guidance role in Australia, Cook’s return in 1942 effectively signalled the end of his engagement with the field. The demands of wartime saw him “manpowered” to the Department of Labour and National Service, where his subsequent work was primarily in the area of industrial psychology (Bourke, 2007). Cook’s legacy for child guidance in Australia nevertheless endured, thanks to a second injection of Carnegie funds, this time through ACER and in the form of the publication of his doctoral study as a monograph. The Theory and Technique of Child Guidance (Cook, 1944) was the first Australian publication to survey the field. In providing practitioners with what was effectively an Australian manual, it represented an important local contribution to the field of child guidance. As I have argued, in the establishment and development of child guidance in Australia, the Commonwealth Fund and the Carnegie Corporation played important but distinctive roles. The Commonwealth Fund’s influence in Australia is particularly interesting, for it underlines the significance of the reach of American philanthropy, which in the case of child guidance effectively underwrote an international movement, even though direct funding was largely restricted to its mental hygiene programmes in the USA and Britain. The Carnegie Corporation, by contrast, with its significant funding of a range of activities in the dominions, was especially important to Australian developments, providing support for the transnational carriage of ideas and practices that had been set in train elsewhere. Conclusion Despite the efforts of some enthusiastic supporters, child guidance remained a fledgling movement during the 1930s and indeed into the 1940s in Australia, with only a small number of dedicated child guidance clinics established during that time. In 1944, Cook lamented the fact that Australian developments lagged behind those of America and Britain, declaring that “the history of child guidance in Australia is yet to be made” (Cook, 1944, p. 14). Australia’s “backwardness”, in his view, was not due to an absence of need, but rather arose from insufficient public and professional concern with child guidance, inadequate training facilities and the failure of governments to provide adequate financial support. While perhaps underestimating the significant inroads that had been made in the field, especially in Sydney, his observation nevertheless captures the sense of disappointment that many Australian advocates of child guidance felt at its slow rate of expansion. NSW was the only state education department to establish full service child guidance clinics in the 1930s (Cunningham and Pratt, 1940). Clinics were also established, in NSW and elsewhere, in association with Health Departments – generally attached to hospitals, such as the clinic established at the Rachel Foster Hospital for Women and Children which opened in Sydney in the mid-1930s and another that was in operation soon after at the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children[16]. As a reflection of an important international preventative mental health initiative for children and adolescents during the interwar period, child guidance deserves further attention in Australian historiography. In NSW, as I have shown, the clinic played a pivotal role in the shift towards the school as a site of surveillance, intervention and regulation of the child. Nevertheless, the dearth of historical records renders the history of child guidance in Australia problematic. While it has been possible to map out the general organisation and funding of clinics established during the interwar period, it is difficult to ascertain the extent to which clinics established in NSW and elsewhere reflected a wholesale adoption of the clinical model of American child guidance, or whether a particularly Australian approach developed. What is clear is that in a general sense, the American model of child guidance had a measure of success in Australia in the 1930s. However, the vision of early advocates, who had hoped they could emulate the level of service provision as it existed internationally, failed to be fully realised. While the Carnegie Corporation provided important support, including grants for the ill-fated Melbourne centre, travel grants and publications through ACER and support for the training of psychiatric social “Help for wayward children” 15 HER 41,1 16 workers in Sydney, the movement in Australia was largely piecemeal and ad hoc. The Australian experience, particularly when compared with that of America and Britain, highlights the critical role of the Commonwealth Fund’s major coordinated philanthropic programmes of the 1920s and 1930s. As A.R. Phillips noted in 1946: “Child Guidance is, and always will be, an expensive service, beyond the reach of the majority of people unless supported by charitable endowments or government aid” (Phillips, 1946b, p. 25). Consequently, with the exception of clinics in NSW, the institutionalisation of child guidance appears to have been more indirect, its principles, as Phillips put it, “grafted on to the work of clinics originally organised for other purposes” rather than reflected through the establishment of dedicated child guidance clinics (Phillips, 1946a, p. 10). It is tempting, then, to assess the early history of child guidance in Australia largely in administrative and institutional terms – the failure of the Melbourne centre and the success of its Sydney counterpart reflecting the critical role of state in the absence of philanthropic support. Certainly, this is an important part of the story. Yet, if one is to measure the influence of the child guidance movement in the 1930s in terms of the uptake of ideas, rather than a count of child guidance clinics, a more complex picture emerges. Newspaper articles and other contemporary sources do suggest a general acceptance of the utility of the child guidance approach. And as Phillips noted in the mid-1940s, a “child guidance outlook” had by that decade come to characterise the work of psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers in many clinics engaged with the psychological and psychiatric assessment and treatment of children. It may thus be surmised that while few child guidance clinics were in operation in 1930s Australia, child guidance principles were widely embraced (Phillips, 1946b). Along with the institutional developments, therefore, it is important to also acknowledge the traction gained in the broader realm of ideas and practices about “adjustment” and mental health, particularly the efficacy of multidisciplinary approaches to problems of childhood and the necessity of early intervention. Both in its clinical form and in the broader philosophy of the movement, child guidance typified the embrace of early intervention as a mode of thought. Providing “help for wayward children” through child guidance was, consequently, a strategy that not only targeted the problem child of the present, but also the potentially maladjusted adult of the future. Notes 1. Children seen in US clinics were generally aged between five and 15 years, with the majority of cases being in the age group of 10-14 years. While treatment was provided for both boys and girls, clinics saw a significantly higher number of boys (Stevenson, 1934, pp. 55-6). 2. By the early 1930s the Commonwealth Fund moved from direct financing to coordination and oversight, and in the years leading up to 1945 when funding ceased, its focus was largely securing child guidance as a speciality practice through clinical training and overseeing clinical practice. 3. Reports of the general director to the directors of the Commonwealth Fund, 5 April 1932, Commonwealth Fund Archives, Box 2; 21 April 1936, Box 5, Series 31, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, NY. In Britain, churches and social welfare agencies provided primary financial support for clinics, with local government also contributing financially. As with US clinics, socio-demographic patterns influenced the client base of clinics and the funding sources they secured. 4. For a broader analysis of this issue, see Rodgers (1998, p. 3). 5. As detailed in various Reports of the General Director to the Directors of the Commonwealth Fund during the 1930s. 6. Both in Victoria and NSW, the establishment of clinics were founding objectives of statebased Mental Hygiene Councils, see VCMH (1931); Papers of Kenneth Cunningham, Series 52, Vol. 4, Box 5095, Australian Council for Educational Research Archives, Cunningham Library, ACER, Melbourne; Sydney Morning Herald (1932). 7. VCMH, Second Annual Report 1931-1932. 8. VCMH, Third Annual Report 1932-1933. 9. VCMH, Fourth Annual Report 1933-1934. 10. Travancore was established in 1933 for the care and education of “mentally retarded” children. By 1938 it included a special school, administered by the Department of Education, and a residential unit and psychiatric clinic, administered by the Mental Hygiene Authority. In 1939 the Mental Hygiene Authority assumed responsibility for all aspects of the Centre (Cunningham et al., 1939, p. 175; Cunningham and Pratt, 1940, p. 277). 11. VCMH, Sixth Annual Report 1935-1936, Council of Social Service of NSW records, MLMSS 2929, Box K48910, Mitchell Library, Sydney; The Argus (1932a). 12. There were also court and hospital clinics, which dealt with more severe cases. For an overview of clinical services connected with education across Australian states, see Cunningham et al. (1939); Cunningham and Pratt (1940) and Jennings (1957). 13. Letter to SA Education Department Principal Medical Officer outlining details of NSW Child Guidance Clinics, NSW Education Department Subject Files, Medical Branch, 20/12793, State Records Office of NSW, Sydney, 3 June 1937. 14. “Cook, P.H., 1938-1941” (n.d.), CCNY Records, Series III.A, Box 122, Folder 12, Columbia University, New York; “Alison Turtle interview with P.H. Cook”, 8 December 1988, Box 124, Folder 91/144, Australian Psychological Society Archives, University of Melbourne, Melbourne. 15. A number of Australians, including Kenneth Cunningham, visited child guidance clinics while in the USA on Carnegie Travel Grants. 16. The Rachel Forster Hospital for Women and Children, Thirteenth Annual Report, June 1935, p. 6; Sydney Morning Herald (1938). References (The) Argus (1929), “Mental deficiency: Professor Berry’s inquiry: work among children: child clinic recommended”, The Argus, 5 September, p. 7. (The) Argus (1932a), “Child guidance centre”, The Argus, 29 September, p. 5. (The) Argus (1932b), “To-day’s news”, The Argus, 8 October, p. 13. Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) (1931), Australian Council for Educational Research Annual Report 1930-1931, Brown, Prior & Co, Melbourne. Berry, R.J.A. (1929), Report to The Edward Wilson (of The Argus) Trust on Mental Deficiency in the State of Victoria, with Suggestions for the Establishment of a Child Guidance Clinic, The Argus, Melbourne. Bourke, H. (2007), “Cook, Sir Philip Halford (1912-1990)”, in Langmore, D. and Bennett, D. (Eds), Australian Dictionary of Biography, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, Vol. 17, pp. 244-45. Burton, N.W. (1939), “The child guidance clinic”, PhD dissertation, The University of Sydney, Sydney. “Help for wayward children” 17 HER 41,1 Commonwealth Fund (1963), The Commonwealth Fund: Historical Sketch, 1918-1962, The Commonwealth Fund, New York, NY. Cook, P.H. (1941), “The theory and technique of child guidance with special reference to Australian conditions”, PhD dissertation, University of Kansas, KS. Cook, P.H. (1944), The Theory and Technique of Child Guidance, Melbourne University Press for the Australian Council for Educational Research, Melbourne. 18 Cunningham, K.S. (1932), “Problem children in Melbourne schools”, Australian Educational Studies (First Series), Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, pp. 75-85. Cunningham, K.S. and Pratt, J.J. (1940), Review of Education in Australia, 1939, Melbourne University Press in Association with Oxford University Press, Melbourne. Cunningham, K.S., McIntyre, G.A. and Radford, W.C. (1939), Review of Education in Australia, 1938, Melbourne University Press in Association with Oxford University Press, Melbourne. Horn, M. (1984), “The moral message of child guidance 1925-1945”, Journal of Social History, Vol. 18 No. 1, pp. 25-36. Horn, M. (1989), Before It’s Too Late: The Child Guidance Movement in the United States, 1922-1945, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, PA. Jennings, A.N. (1957), “Child guidance clinics”, Family Health, Vol. 37, p. 12. Jones, K. (1999), Taming the Troublesome Child: American Families, Child Guidance, and the Limits of Psychiatric Authority, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. McLeod, J. and Wright, K. (2009), “Social values and schooling: curriculum, counselling and the education of the adolescent, 1930s-1970s”, in Jeffrey, P. (Ed.), AARE 2008 Conference Papers Collection, Australian Association for Research in Education, Brisbane, pp. 1-12, available at: www.aare.edu.au/08pap/mc108783.pdf Phillips, A.R. (1946a), “The approach to child guidance in Victoria”, Social Service (November), pp. 10-13. Phillips, A.R. (1946b), “The approach to child guidance in Victoria”, The Hospital Magazine, April, pp. 23-6. Richardson, T. (1989), The Century of the Child: The Mental Hygiene Movement and Social Policy in the United States and Canada, State University of New York Press, New York, NY. Rodgers, D. (1998), Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Sampson, O. (1980), Child Guidance: Its History, Provenance and Future, British Psychological Society, Great Britain. Schlossman, S. (1981), “Philanthropy and the gospel of child development”, History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 21 No. 3, pp. 275-99. Scoville, M. (n.d.), “Early history of the child guidance movement in England”, Commonwealth Fund Archives, Series 16, Box 9, Folder 88, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, NY. Stearns, P. (2003), Anxious Parents: A History of Modern Childrearing in America, New York University Press, New York, NY. Stevenson, G.S. (1934), Child Guidance Clinics: A Quarter Century of Development, Commonwealth Fund, New York, NY. Stewart, J. (2004), “US influences on the development of child guidance and psychiatric social work in Scotland and Great Britain during the inter-war period”, in Andresen, A., Elvebakken, K.T. and Hubbard, W.E. (Eds), Public Health and Preventive Medicine 1800-2000, Rokkansenteret, Bergen, pp. 85-95. Stewart, J. (2006b), “Psychiatric social work in inter-war Britain: child guidance, American ideas, American Philanthropy”, Michael Quaterly, Vol. 3 No. 2, pp. 78-91. Stewart, J. (2009), “The scientific claims of British child guidance, 1918-45”, The British Journal for the History of Science, Vol. 42 No. 3, pp. 407-32. Sydney Morning Herald (1932), “Clinic suggestion for child guidance: aim of Mental Hygiene Council”, Sydney Morning Herald, 6 December, p. 12. Sydney Morning Herald (1938), “To study in USA”, Sydney Morning Herald, 6 October, p. 31. Sydney Morning Herald (1939), “Child guidance clinic at hospital: help for wayward children”, Sydney Morning Herald, 23 February, p. 22. Taft, R. (1982), “Psychology and its history in Australia”, Australian Psychologist, Vol. 17 No. 1, pp. 31-9. Thom, D. (1992), “Wishes, anxieties, play, and gestures: child guidance in inter-war England”, in Cooter, R. (Ed.), In the Name of the Child: Health and Welfare, 1880-1940, Studies in the Social History of Medicine, Routledge, London, pp. 200-19. Thomson, M. (1995), “Mental hygiene as an international movement”, in Weindling, P. (Ed.), International Health Organisations and Movements, 1918-1939, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 283-304. Tyler, D. (1997), “At risk of maladjustment: the problem of child mental health”, in Petersen, A. and Bunton, R. (Eds), Foucault, Health and Medicine, Routledge, London, pp. 74-93. Victorian Council for Mental Hygiene (VCMH) (1931), First Annual Report, 1930-1931, The Council, Melbourne. White, M. (1997), “Carnegie philanthropy in Australia in the nineteen thirties: a reassessment”, History of Education Review, Vol. 26 No. 1, pp. 1-24. Witmer, H. (1940), Psychiatric Clinics for Children, The Commonwealth Fund, New York, NY. Wrigley, J. (1990), “Children’s caregivers and ideologies of parental inadequacy”, in Abel, E. and Nelson, M. (Eds), Circles of Care: Work and Identity in Women’s Lives, State University of New York Press, New York, NY, pp. 290-312. Further reading Stewart, J. (2006a), “Child guidance in interwar Scotland: international influences and domestic concerns”, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Vol. 80 No. 3, pp. 513-39. About the author Katie Wright is an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne. Her research interests include the history and cultural influence of psychology, the sociology of education, and historical and contemporary approaches to the provision of student welfare and support services. She is the author of The Rise of the Therapeutic Society: Psychological Knowledge & the Contradictions of Cultural Change (New Academia, 2011) and is currently researching the history of student guidance and counselling in Australia. Katie Wright can be contacted at: kwright@ unimelb.edu.au To purchase reprints of this article please e-mail: [email protected] Or visit our web site for further details: www.emeraldinsight.com/reprints “Help for wayward children” 19