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The group of children for whom the Council have responsibility
is (f) above:—
(i) children maintained for reward and dealt with in Part 7,
Public Health Act, 1936—Child Life Protection, and
(ii) children dealt with under Section 7, Adoption of Children
(Regulation) Act, 1939.
The scheme according to which children are supervised in
Wembley is as follows:—
All the Health Visitors are nominated as Child Protection
Visitors, each Health Visitor being responsible for the care of
the foster children in her district. The Borough is divided into
16 Health Visitor areas each purposely small enough to allow an
intimate personal supervision by each Health Visitor. On
information coming to the Department of the proposed reception
of a foster child the Health Visitor visits the home and investigates
the circumstances, consideration being given both to the
applicant foster parent and to the home circumstances.
All children accepted for reward are visited monthly by the
Health Visitors, routine periodic attendance at the Health Clinics
being encouraged and almost without exception such attendance
continues until the children are five years old and go to school.
As a school-child the foster child then comes under the periodic
supervision of the Health Visitor, who is also School Nurse.
Similar routine is followed with regard to children placed
for adoption, with the same preliminary report on details and
the same monthly visits and supervision. Such (legal) supervision
ceases when a child has been legally adopted.
While ascertainment probably, cannot be entirely complete,
the size of each Health Visitor's area is such as to allow her to
know something of most individual families and every now and
again the Health Visitors do come across a foster child whose
reception should have been notified. In such cases formal notification
is insisted upon.
Health Visitors also come across, in their domiciliary work,
children in whose cases it is thought a Notice should have been
sent under the Adoption of Children (Regulation) Act. In
addition, a child may come to the notice of the Health Visitor
whose parents have directly placed the child for adoption. All
such cases forthwith come under supervision of the Department
and a visit is made at intervals as seems appropriate until legal
adoption has taken place, and afterwards the Health Visitor gives
the child the same routine supervision as is given to all children
in her area.
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