The Primary Care and Referral of Children with Emotional and Behavioural Disorders

Abstract

Parents and others responsible for children with emotional or behavioural difficulties have available to them a number of channels, formal and informal, through which they may seek help for their children or themselves. Generally they turn first to other family members or to close friends, seeking either confirmation of their worries or reassurance that there is nothing basically wrong and no cause for concern. When convinced that some help is needed, they may then turn to a trusted individual such as their clergyman, family practitioner, or paediatrician. Because these individuals already know the family and have an ongoing rapport with them, they are in many ways more able to establish quickly a working relationship that can be used to help solve the problems. However, because of the social aspect of the relationship the family has with the person to whom they turn for help, they may withhold certain very personal and emotionally charged but rather important information out of a sense of reticence or embarrassment. Thus the personal relationship, while facilitating the early contacts, may impede the investigation and examination of more intimate areas.