Helpless Children
The Report of the Care of Children Committee, presided over by Miss Myra Curtis, is almost as valuable for the light it casts on the deplorable conditions under which homeless children are maintained today in some public institutions as for the specific proposals it makes for remedying evils that stand urgently in need of remedy. It must not, of course, be supposed that all institutions are as bad as some of those described in detail in this Report, but the manifestly and incontestably bad are obviously numerous enough to raise a very pointed question. Why did the thousands of persons who must have been thoroughly familiar with these conditions and could per- fectly easily have called public attention to them never do so? Now the Curtis Committee has let in the light of day, and sweeping changes must inevitably result. Administratively, the principal change proposed is that all the children concerned—some 125,0oo altogether, mainly in Local Authority Institutions, Voluntary Homes and Foster Homes—shall become the responsibility of local authorities working through special ad hoc committees, and with responsibility at the centre co-ordinated by a special department of the Home Office or the Ministry of Health or of Education. These "deprived " children include the illegitimate, orphans, those removed from their own homes by the courts, and the mentally or physically defective. As a general principle, the Committee lays it down, no doubt rightly, that suitable foster homes provide the best method of treatment, with voluntary institutions second and public institutions last. But it may he difficult in many localities to find sufficient foster homes of the right kind, particularly since the Committee seems hesitant'about admitting the principle that the foster-mother should receive some small payment for her trouble over and above the bare cost of main- tenance. The fact that responsibility is divided between several Government Departments must not be made the excuse for any delay whatever in giving practical effect to the Curtis Committee's proposals.
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