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79
in the household under the age of nine years. Unless
special reasons exist it is the practice in Dagenham to
limit the number of foster children taken by one person
to one. The practice of herding numbers of foster
children together is to be deprecated, and with very few
exceptions, is disallowed. The exceptions are in the
cases of certain foster mothers who, for many years, have
been permitted to take several children; as no complaints
have been received and further, the children
have been well cared for, it is not considered necessary
in these cases to break the practice which has obtained
for a long period.
If it is subsequently considered that the environment
of the foster mother may be prejudicial to the
child, the procedure is to obtain an order from the
Court of Petty Sessions to prohibit the foster mother
from continuing to act as such.
For the purpose of Section 209 of the Public Health
Act, 1936, all the Health Visitors are Infant Life
Protection Visitors and visit foster children in their
district at regular intervals, and in addition, all foster
children below the age of five are required to attend the
Infant Welfare Centres.
Day Foster Mothers.
During 1937, the Council decided to adopt a scheme
for supervising the well-being of children under school
age. The question of the establishment of one or more
day nurseries was considered but owing to the nature of
the distribution of the population in relation to the
industries, it was decided that one day nursery would
only serve such a limited number of inhabitants that
some alternative scheme might be adopted.
A scheme was, therefore, introduced for establishing
a system of Day Foster Mothers. Briefly, this scheme
is as follows:—