Turf and tension: psychiatric and inclusive communities servicing students referred for emotional and behavioural difficulties

The existing literature demonstrates that children who are referred by their teachers as presenting with emotional and/or behavioural difficulties in schools are least likely of all children with difficulties to be included in their community school. Two common obstacles to their inclusion have been identified and discussed in the literature: a perception of teacher inability to work with these students and, more recently, student need for specialized services. In describing an attempt to include these children in their community school, the present paper suggests a third obstacle: the implicit collusion of psychiatric/psychological services and educators in placing the ‘ownership’ of emotional difficulties in the psychiatric/psychological domain.