Child Guidance

[7] Striving towards civic advancement and supported by the city's interested professionals such as teachers, social workers, lawyers, academics, doctors, community leaders and politicians, the Juvenile Courts and correctional institutions ended the incarceration of children with adults.

The resulting climate enabled Adler and his associates to establish 28 child guidance clinics, and Vienna became the first city in the world to provide schoolchildren with free educational therapy.

[13][1] During World War II, the mass evacuation of children from cities and their families not only created a vast logistical challenge, but offered a unique opportunity to study the impacts on individuals.

Their accent on child development stages and new treatment methods put a strain on the Medical model and hierarchical structure of the clinics and led to inter-professional conflicts.

[1] With a changing social landscape in the country and new trends in sociology and culture as well as in criminology, followed by the introduction of Family therapy, the clinics struggled to adapt to new demands.

[3][1][19] A recent commentator has stated that the lack of investment in contemporary youth mental health services, including in forensic psychiatry, in the UK has not filled the gap left by the absent child guidance clinics which, for all their shortcomings, were at least accessible and focused on children and their families.