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Daily Guardian Scheme
This scheme was re-introduced in 1947 for children of working mothers
who are not eligible for day nursery accommodation for their pre-school age
children. So far there has been no difficulty in finding a suitable number of
women to undertake daily care of children who are taken to them and recovered
from them by their parents each day.
Proper safeguards are established for the welfare of such children and
a written copy of the obligations of parents and daily guardians is given to
each of the parties to the agreement to ensure that they are known. While
the authority acts as an agent between parent and guardian, the actual placing
is the responsibility of the parents. The scheme works easily. The children
are seldom moved again after being accepted by a guardian unless the mother
gives up work. The main reasons for using the scheme are financial ones.
Health visitors are responsible for the approval of guardians for
registration and for periodic visiting of children placed in their care. No
person is registered if there is any doubt that the rules of the scheme will be
followed and that a good standard of care can be maintained. It follows,
therefore, that some applicants for registration are rejected and the authority
is not involved if those rejected accept children for daily minding. Guardians
are paid one shilling a day for each child minded (not exceeding two children)
irrespective of what payment the parent may make to the guardian. During
the year a larger number of children have been minded for a greater number
of days.
No. of Daily Guardians on Register 166
No. of Daily Guardians minding Children 90
No. of Children being minded 106
Total No. of Children minded during the year 231
Total No. of days minded 23,591
Total Payments made to Guardians £1179. l1s. 0d
Day Nurseries
All three day nurseries, Park Lane, Plevna and Stonecroft, are
approved as training schools for student nursery nurses.
The nursery matrons report that during the year there were more
children admitted from broken homes or homes where there is only one parent
than ever before. This is borne out by our records as regards children wholly
supported by one parent and there is evidence to show that more than 50% of
the children on the registers were in the 0-2 years age group. The periods
for which children attended were in many cases shorter than in the past and
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