S08.03 - Is there a link between slow learning, school failure and delinquency?

Abstract

In Sweden, CAP (Child and Adolescent Psychiatry) has a history of more than 100 years. The discipline developed out of paediatrics, education, child social welfare and psychiatry in that time order. In similarity to the situation in Switzerland, “school -psychiatry” was established as a branch of CAP with the aim to understand the link between cognition, behaviour and health and to promote health for children with slow learning capacity and mental retardation who in those days were children at a high risk for juvenile delinquency. The first CAP units opened at the end of World War I in the Stockholm Public School system and at the Paediatric Clinic of Norrtull's Children's Hospital, one of the two Paediatric University Clinics at the Karolinska Instituted in Stockholm. From 1920-1970, school psychiatry was an important part of child and adolescent work in Sweden. It was based on a true cooperation between CAP and Education using the principles from “heilpädagogie” i.e. “curative education”: as follows:

To support pupils’ creativity, language and speech competence and their social competence

To accept each pupil's individual maturity/developmental level and behavior by introducing “School-maturity tests” before school-start.

To introduce different school curricula for children with average intelligence, school-immaturity, slow learning capacity (IQ 70-90), mental retardation etc.

To introduce special training for teachers in order to have teachers that knew how children with “problems” should be taught.

To use screening and monitoring of skills i.e. screening of intellectual skill, language, reading, spelling, math's, maturity, behavior, health at preschool start,