Nursery school
In 1940, during the Second World War, she returned to the LSE to train for a career in social work. She enrolled in the thirteen-month mental health course, Britain's top programme for psychiatric social work. The course included psychoanalytic theory under educational psychologist and psychoanalyst Susan Isaacs, a pupil of John Carl Flugel, who published studies on the intellectual and social development of children and promoted the Nursery school movement. Clare also worked under the child psychiatrist Mildred Creak, who is known for the development of diagnostic criteria for autism. While on the course Clare was recognized as a gifted student, described by one classmate, Marjorie Jones, as “academically brilliant”.