Report on the working of the Education (Provision of Meals) Act, 1906, for the year ending 31st March 1910.

Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on the working of the Education (Provision of Meals) Act, 1906, for the year ending 31st March 1910. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    advice in the choice of food, and test the results of different dietaries. If he visits the kitchens and the dining centres from time to time he can see that satisfactory methods are adopted, and ensure, for instance, that especial attention is given to the more delicate children, and to those whom it is difficult to induce to eat the food provided. He will also have an oppor- tunity of judging the extent to which individual children are benefited by the meals, and of testing it by periodical examina- tion, weighing, and so forth; and, having discovered the main cause or causes of malnutrition, he will be able to advise on the machinery which should be put in action to secure a remedy. This part of the work may form an important branch of the arrangements for “following up”’ in connexion with the work of Medical Inspection and Treatment. 8. The Board have not yet received a sufficient number of the Reports of School Medical Officers for the year under review to enable them to form an accurate opinion of the extent to which these officers have taken an active part in the organisation of the arrangements for the meals. It is, however, gathered from the Returns that there were 70 cases in which the School Medical Officer had-some share in the recommendation of the children, and 39 cases in which recommendation was made by School Nurses. In the previous year the numbers were 55 and 30 respectively ; and it appears that there isa growing tendency to correlate the two functions of the Local Education Authority and to take advantage of the expert opinion of the School Medical Officer in the selection of children for meals. More light may be thrown upon this question when the School Medical Officers’ reports for the year ending 3lst December 1910 are before the Board; but an examination of those for the previous year has shown that in only 37 of the Reports is the subject mentioned, and that in many of those cases the only information given is a simple statement of the number of meals provided and the number of children fed. 9. A few instances may, however, be given in which the School Medical Officer has actively co-operated in the work connected with the provision of meals. [For example, at Brighton, an area to which a somewhat full reference was made in the former Report, the School Medical Officer, Dr. Forbes, reports that “all children for whom an application ‘ form is received are weighed and measured, and in special “cases thoroughly examined by the School Medical Officer or “ School Doctor. During 1910, 1,633 children were examined ‘and a Report made to the Canteen Branch Sub-Committee on the advisability or not of giving free meals on medical grounds. Many of these were examined on two or three occasions, the total number of examinations made being 2,392. “The children recommended for free meals were those of deficient physique, deficient weight in relation to height, tuber- culous and anemic children, etc. Of the applications received,