ABSTRACT
Most severely retarded children in residential care live in conditions which compare very unfavourably with those which govern the lives of ordinary children brought up away from parents in long stay residential nurseries and children's homes. This chapter describes the kind of children with whom the authors were concerned in their studies, the manner in which they set about the inquiries, and the general conclusions they drew from them. Severely retarded children do of course grow and develop and acquire competencies, just as normal children do, though development is slower and often differs qualitatively from the development of normal children. The autonomy of the unit heads was assessed by a scale containing items relating to the degree of freedom from inspection and supervision by supervisors which she enjoyed; by the degree of control she had over policy decisions affecting the children.
