ABSTRACT
During childhood, children and young people can experience a wide variety of disorders and difficulties, which can threaten their development and which add an extra dimension to their general day-to-day need for care, support and protection. The different pieces of research not only highlight the considerable overlap between agencies concerning the types of childhood behaviour they deal with, even if they often fail to collaborate, but also possibly suggest another process at work in the referral process. The vagueness and often fragmented or ambiguous nature of policy is identified as a factor adding to the variability of admission decisions. Top-down policies were often seen as too distant from the realities of everyday work, and were not disseminated in any uniform way. In 1965, M. Rutter noted 'a generally acceptable classification of psychiatric disorders which occur in childhood is urgently needed and the lack of such a classification has been a severe obstacle to progress in child psychiatry'.
