Introduction

In this chapter we analyse the spread and dissemination of child guidance in the 1930s in three ways. First, we examine the propagation of child guidance ideas through various media and events. These included articles in popular journals and meetings for lay persons put on by child guidance staff. Note is also taken of the ways in which such staff sought to convert fellow professionals, non-medical and medical, not directly involved in this branch of child psychiatry and psychology. Second, we examine the spread of clinics to centres such as Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester and Bristol (in 1930, 1931, 1933 and 1936 respectively, with Birmingham having a claim to be the first local authority clinic) and how this contributed to a wider acceptance of the child guide message in official circles. Third, we then turn to Scotland. Here, the Notre Dame Child Guidance Clinic in Glasgow was both an exemplar of the American/medical model and of a particularly Roman Catholic approach to child guidance. Scottish child guidance as a whole, though, was dominated not by psychiatry but by psychology, thereby sharply differentiating it from the predominant situation in England.

Publications and Talks

The idea that child guidance was about more than simply clinical work was to become especially pronounced after the Second World War. But in the 1930s, while still tending to emphasize the clinic's centrality, a concerted effort was made to promote the child guidance message to a much wider range of professional and lay audiences.