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44
It will be seen from the table that the gross cost per attendance
has varied from 3s. 6d. in the year 1923-24 to 5s. 6d. in the first six
months of the current year, and the net cost from 2s. 5d. in the year
1923-24 to 4s. 9d. in the first six months of this year. The average gross
cost for other Day Nurseries throughout the country, I understand, is
2s. 10d. with a net cost of about 2s. 1d.
In fairness to the Ealing Day Nursery, however, it must be pointed
out that no more inconvenient house could have been used for the
purpose. The building consists of four floors, the two main rooms,
in which the children are kept, being small, one on the ground floor
and the other on the first floor. The kitchen and the bathing-room are
in the basement, and the older children have to go down a narrow staircase
to get out to the garden. All these features add to the difficulties
and therefore to the cost of management. In fact, these difficulties make
the retention of a good staff impossible. It is difficult to keep servants
in a dwelling house with a basement but it is still more difficult to keep
them in a Day Nursery with a basement.
After the Day Nursery came under the control of the Ealing Town
Council a resolution was passed on the 26th October, 1926. which limited
the children admitted. The resolution is as follows:—
Resolved: That the children eligible for admission to the
Day Nursery be those whose mothers have to go out to work
on account of being widowed or unmarried or having a sick or
unemployed husband.
As can be seen from the number of attendances this resolution had
little, if any, effect in reducing the attendances for the attendances had
in fact been on the decline before this. The attendances in the year
1926-27 were higher than in the previous year but in 1927-28 there was
a decline of 259 compared with the previous year, and in 1928-29 there
was a further decline of 141 compared with the year 1927-28. The
greatest decline, however, has teen in the first six months of the current
year during which there were 1,234 attendances compared with 1,679
in the corresponding six months of the previous year.
It is difficult to explain this reduction. The resolution of the
Council has not been strictly enforced and in several instances where
the fathers have been in employment, but at a low wage, the children
have been admitted to the Day Nursery.
The reduction in the numbers may be due to the fact that the
mothers are going out less to work and therefore do not require to send
their children to the Day Nursery. Here it may be stated that of the
fourteen mothers sending their children to the Centre at the end of
October, four had to work because their husbands were earning low
wages, one because her husband had deserted her, one because her
husband was ill with tuberculosis, two because their husbands were
unemployed, one because she was a widow and five because they were
unmarried.
We have now reached an extraordinary state of affairs. We are
maintaining children at the Day Nursery at a cost of 5s. 6d. per day in
order to enable the mothers to go out and earn 4s. to 4s. 6d. a day, of
which they pay 9d. a day towards the maintenance of their children while
they are at work.
There can be no doubt that as a rule the best nurse is the mother
and the best place to rear the child is in the mother's home. A grant
to the mother to enable her to look after her child at home would be a
better arrangement but at present there is no legal power by which this
grant can be made. The problem is a very difficult one and I expect the
difficulty accounts for the fact that of the 98 Day Nurseries recognised
by the Ministry of Health only 19 are maintained by Local Authorities.
What is to be done?