ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the traditional services offered by local education authorities. These services have their roots in history: they arose separately to meet needs as they were perceived. The traditional services distinguished to four areas of concern. First, attendance and welfare problems which are the responsibility of education departments through their school attendance or education welfare sections. Second, handicaps with a strictly or largely medical basis, normally dealt with through school health services. Third, behaviour problems that may appear to have their origin in psychological disorders, usually the responsibility of child guidance services administered by school health departments either alone or jointly with education departments. And fourth, learning difficulties, usually the concern of school psychological services, frequently administered by education departments probably with joint use of staff with child guidance services. There is overlap between the works of these services: indeed that is one reason for the increasing emphasis on co-operative working between them and on new forms of organization.
