ABSTRACT
For effectiveness in provision for children with EBD it would seem essential that the characteristics of the client group - both pupils and parents - are clearly understood in order to provide a secure base for appropriate responses at both institutional and individual level. This may seem an obvious comment, but the history of special provision suggests that it is highly significant (Aichhorn 1951, Millham et al. 1975). In too many institutions neither the pupils nor their families appear to have been at the centre of staff thinking; instead, organisational goals relating to survival of the institution or to making life easier for the staff seem to have predominated. In this chapter, in order to emphasise the centrality of the child and his or her family, we outline the characteristics of the pupils attending EBD schools and of their families before, in later chapters, describing the staff and the provision made in the schools.
