The families of dull children. A classification for predicting careers.

Under the Education Act of 1944, children who are backward at school may be referred for a special medical examination and officially "ascertained" as educationally subnormal (E.S.N.). On leaving school, they may be notified to the Local Health Authority and placed under the supervision of the mental health service. Some authorities, believing that these young people are able to manage their own affairs, take no action in such cases, whereas others place nearly all of them under statutory supervision and thus give them the legal status of mental defectives. The absence of uniformity in dealing with them prompted the present investigation, the purpose of which was to discover whether a grouping of E.S.N. subjects by family circumstances might indicate their real needs.