Homeless Children and Home Office
The belated announcement made by the Prime Minister on Mon- day regarding the application of the Curtis Report was entirely satis- factory. The concentration of all responsibility for deprived children in the hands of the Home Office rather than the Ministry of Educa- tion or the Ministry of Health—both of the latter heavily overworked departments—must be accepted as sound. To keep general charge of the home life of these children, so far as they are provided with any worthy of the name, in the hands of one department while another is responsible for their school life is perfectly logical, and the same applies in the local government areas, where ad hoc com- mittees, with full-time Children's Officers to serve them, will be appointed, as the Curtis Committee recommended. There is on the face of it no reason why Education Committees should be more responsible for deprived children outside school hours than they are for normal children. The Home Office will, of course, need, and is to have, a new and enlarged Children's Branch and a-con- siderably expanded inspectorate. That should be the answer to the criticism that the Home Office is labelled as the Department con- cerned with children mainly as law-breakers. So far as that was ever true it will be true no longer, for the new constructive and protective function will, it may be hoped, very largely supersede the other in the public mind. It is satisfactory that whatever competition there has been between Government departments in this matter has been settled once for all by the Government's decision, and it will be unfortunate if any controversy arises about administration in the counties and county boroughs, where the Government has come down definitely for special Children's Committees, at any rate for a trial period of three years.
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