Nurture groups for children with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties

Nurture groups were started in 1969 by Marjorie Boxall, an educational psychologist (EP) working for the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) in Hackney, which in common with other Inner London boroughs had more than its share of children in difficulties. Studies showed 19.1 per cent of Inner London pupils to have ‘behavioural deviance’ compared with 10.6 per cent in the Isle of Wight (Rutter et al., 1975). Signs of psychiatric disorder were reported by 25.4 per cent of parents, compared with 12 per cent in the Isle of Wight. This caused unmanageable numbers of referrals to special schools for the ‘maladjusted’ or the ‘educationally subnormal’, contributing to the establishment of the Warnock Committee in 1974.