A children's charter / The Labour Party.

  • Labour Party
Date:
1937
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A children's charter / The Labour Party. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    plan to make the best use on behalf of the children, of the resources available now and during the period of transition to a Socialist society. What are the main responsibilities of an enlightened community towards its children ? We should recognise it as a social duty to secure for every child, first of all, equal oppoortunities for healthy physical growth; and second, equal opportunities for the free development of personality and individual capacity. In other words, we owe it to the nation’s children to abolish class distinction in health and class distinction in education. CARE OF INFANCY The Handicap of Poverty Class distinction in health is a phrase that sounds harsh to the ears of those who prefer to attribute the results of poverty to any cause but poverty. The figures of infant mortality give the answer. While the infant death rate has shown, for the country as a whole, a re- markable decline over a period of years, the contrast between figures for the poor area and the comparatively prosperous area, or the overcrowded ward and the re- sidential ward in the same borough make it clear that poverty is a handicap to a child from the moment of its birth; that three or four times as many babies die in the first year of life in the poor areas as in the well-to-do; that poverty-stricken districts with a comparatively low infant death rate, are districts where the community, through the Local Authority, has provided housing con- ditions and medical and other social services which have meant a definite improvement in the standard of life in the homes, and so have given the babies a fairer start. Pre-Natal Care How can we develop and extend our social services to improve the nurture of our children in the early period of life?
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