Report of the Care of Children Committee.

  • Great Britain. Care of Children Committee.
Date:
[1946]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Care of Children Committee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    36/200 (page 34)
    125. It seems likely that the following accounts by a visiting group, of records kept in institutions under one authority, are typical. ‘‘ The only record received or passed on is an ‘ identifying ’ and a medical record.”’ ‘‘ Six two-year-old children had recently been admitted from another institution under this authority, and the matron found that they were suffer- ing from scabies and impetigo, though no note of this fact had been sent to her‘at the time of their transfer, and it was impossible to isolate them with the accommodation at her disposal.’’ Another example: ‘JT ran through a list with the Master which had been provided by the Public Assistance officer, of children who had been received into the institu- tion on a ‘ place of safety’ order. He did not seem clear which of the children had been received in this category. . . . No records about the children other than the brief admission card and medical particulars are received here, though it is clear that the Matron and Master take trouble to get to know about the children by discussion.”’’ 126. We seldom found that Superintendents and Matrons of children’s Homes were aware of, or regretted, the lack of information about the children in their care. In one or two instances we were told about the difficulty of dealing with children whose histories were unknown; these were exceptions. In one instance in which the Public Assistance Officer had given a good deal of information to the cottage mothers, one of them regretted that similar information was not given about the children for whom the local .authority was acting (through the Education Committee) as “‘ fit person,’” as they were often more difficult children. The fact that no case records are kept in institutions or Homes does not of course imply that no records are kept in the central offices of the Public Assistance department. We found that a great deal of information was filed in the office which was not communicated to those in charge. It would not be fair to judge the general adequacy of the records without a much more careful study of the case files of the Public Assistance Committee than we were able to carry out. 127. We heard one serious criticism of medical records from the medical officer of a workhouse who was also responsible for the medical supervision of the children’s Homes. He said that in his area the children came into the Homes without a medical record so that he did not know whether a child had been immunised or whether there was risk of tuberculosis or venereal disease. No education history was available, so that even if the child had been recognised as defective the fact would not be known until he re-entered school. Another medical officer told us that one of the difficulties of treating children from Homes at the Child Guidance Clinic was the failure to provide the kind of history and description of the child’s behaviour which was essential to the understanding and. treatment of his difficulty. 128. In residential nurseries careful records were kept as a general practice with particulars about feeding and height and weight charts. This record almost always lapsed when the child became five years of age. Boarding Out 129. As in the case of children’s Homes, Public Assistance boarding out was in county areas usually supervised by the Guardians Committees, under the general authority of the Public Assistance Committee, while ‘‘ fit person ”’ work was undertaken by the Education Authority. In County Boroughs supervision was usually undertaken by the committee concerned or by one committee of the council acting for another or by a joint committee. We found