As a rule the cases are revised about once a month. Sometimes chronic cases will be continued for two or three months at a time, as at Liverpool. At York the cases are revised only twice a year. At the beginning of the winter the head teachers send in lists of children whom they consider to be necessitous. These children (if the Cases Selection Sub-Committee decide to feed them) remain on the feeding list till the following April, when the head teachers are asked to send in a list of children who they consider need not receive meals during the summer. The Attendance Officers visit again and the cases are revised by the Committee. This method is said to be satisfactory as, though officially the cases are revised so seldom, practically the circumstances are known, since the Attendance Officers regularly visit the homes in the course of their ordinary work and the Chairman of the Canteen Committee knows many of the children intimately. At Bootle, where, as we have seen, the decision as to which children shall be fed is practically in the hands of the teachers, there seems to be no system of revising the cases, and the tendency is for a child who is once put on the feeding list to remain on it till the meals are discontinued in the summer, unless the parents voluntarily withdraw the child on an improvement in the home circumstances.
Without discussing here the question whether it is possible to devise any system of selection which can be satisfactory, we may note some of the disadvantages of the methods at present in use. In the first place, since the selection is made in the main through the teachers, it necessarily follows that the numbers fed in any particular school depend very largely on the attitude taken by the head teachers. As a general rule the teachers are keenly interested in the physical welfare of their children, and anxious to do everything in their power which may promote it; but some teachers are opposed to the provision of meals, feeling that too much is done for the children; others, again, consider their schools "superior," and do not like their children to go to free meals. Constantly one finds an astonishing disproportion between the numbers fed at two adjacent schools, drawing their children from the same locality. It is true that the character of two schools, within a stone's throw of each other, may vary in a curious way, one attracting a more prosperous class of children—perhaps because of the personality of the teacher, better buildings, or some other cause—but this would not account for all the difference. At Bootle, for instance, it was reported, "there is apparently an absence of uniformity in assessing the needs of the children; for in the six schools of the poorest neighbourhoods it is found that of the number on the rolls the percentage of scheduled children varies from 6 per cent. to 34 per cent., and that in two schools of almost identical character, in one case 10 per cent. of the children are returned as needing daily breakfasts, and in the other 34 per cent."[[223]] Where the teachers are anxious to place all apparently underfed children on the feeding list, pressure is not infrequently exercised by the Education Authority to induce them to keep down the numbers.
When an application by the parent is obligatory, there is cause for very grave doubt whether the provision of meals reaches all for whom it is intended. Miss Winder has shown that, at Birmingham, out of 22,753 children for whom applications were received during the three years 1909-11, 4,700 were not fed because the parent failed to appear before the Committee. She investigated the circumstances of twenty-eight of these families and came to the conclusion that, "although the small number of families investigated cannot justify an absolutely positive assertion, I think it may fairly be concluded that, on the whole, they are representative of most of the families whose applications are not granted, and that the home circumstances of these families are much the same as those of the families whose applications have been granted."[[224]] This is the impression gained from enquiries at other towns. At West Ham it is clear that there are children who need the meals, but do not get them because their parents will not apply. The number of "missed" cases does not appear to be large, for the Act is administered in a sympathetic spirit, the Superintendent of Visitors impressing on the Attendance Officers that they should bring to his notice any case where the children appear to be suffering from lack of food. But there are cases where the parents, though they will take the urgency tickets for three meals which the teachers can give them, will take no further action. At one school the headmaster pointed out two boys who looked obviously in need of food and attention generally, but whose father, though out of work, would not apply. In another case he had used his discretion and kept two boys on the list for a month in spite of their parents' failure to renew their application, but he felt obliged at last to take them off though he considered that they still needed the meals. In such cases the Attendance Officers are supposed to visit the homes to find out the cause of the children's underfed condition, and to urge the parents, if necessary, to make application for school meals, but this course does not seem to be by any means always pursued.
At Leicester again, nothing appears to be done in those cases where the child needs food but the parent refuses to apply. And such cases appear to be frequent. We were told by the vicar of a very poor parish that numbers of the parents would not make the necessary application. This evidence seems to be borne out by a comparison of the numbers of cases helped by the Distress Committee and the Canteen Committee. In 1910, for instance, it was found that on September 30, 607 married men and widowers, having 1,145 children wholly, and 214 partly, dependent upon them, were registered at the Labour Bureau as unemployed.[[225]] These numbers were, of course, not a complete index of the unemployment in the town. But, turning to the report of the Canteen Committee, we find that on the same date only 105 children were being helped.[[226]] The great discrepancy between these figures seems to point to the fact that the Canteen Committee had not discovered all the cases of children who were suffering from want of food.
The failure of the parents to apply may in some cases be due to laziness and disregard for their children's welfare. Or it may be that they are too sensitive to ask for help. Or again it may be difficult or impossible for them to attend at the time named. The hour is usually fixed so as to be that most convenient for the parents, but it is impossible, of course, to fix a time which will suit all. At Birmingham cases have even occurred "where the father has been obliged to pay tram fares in order to arrive in time to prove his inability to feed his children"![[227]]
But even if the parent is not obliged to appear in person, but may send an application by note or verbal message to the teacher, there are still "missed" cases. It is notorious that many parents are too proud to let their need be known; in such cases, as teachers have frequently told us, it may be a considerable time before it is discovered that the child is suffering from want of food; and when the discovery is made there is frequently difficulty in inducing the parents to send the child, or in inducing the child itself to go, to the school meals. There still seems to exist, in certain districts at any rate, an idea that the provision of meals is Poor Law Relief, and parents consequently shrink from applying. Moreover, it is not generally recognised that the provision of school meals is by no means universally known to the parents. The School Medical Officer for Leicester reports that "in certain cases it was a matter for regret that the families had not received help earlier by personally applying for assistance. Ignorance of the existence of the Canteen Committee was given as the reason for non-application."[[228]] And we have ourselves been told in other towns of cases where the children were suffering from want of food, but were not receiving school meals because the parents were unaware that they could be obtained.
The enquiries into the home circumstances undoubtedly exercise a deterrent influence—to what extent depends on the manner of the particular individual who makes the enquiries—both with the more independent parent who resents the investigator's visit, and with the criminal and semi-criminal parent whose record does not bear close investigation. Thus the headmaster of a school in one of the worst districts of Liverpool told us that numbers of the boys were in need of food but the parents would not submit to the necessary enquiries and consequently meals were not granted. At Leicester, the searching enquiries made by the Canteen Committee, which, it must be remembered, is practically a department of the Charity Organisation Society, coupled with the insistence on an application by the parent in person, result, as we have seen, in numbers of underfed children remaining underfed.
Where the Education Authority has adopted a scale of income on which to base the decision as to which children shall be fed, this scale is frequently below, and in some cases very considerably below, the minimum amount which has been shown to be necessary for expenditure on food.[[229]] Where the scale is rigidly adhered to, two classes of children are excluded altogether, those who are underfed through the neglect of their parents to provide for them though able to do so, and those cases where the family income may be sufficient to meet normal calls but where, owing to illness or the delicacy of the children or other special circumstances, extra nourishment is required.
To sum up, we find as between town and town, and even as between school and school in the same town, a great want of uniformity in selecting the children to be fed. Where the Education Authority has determined that all its underfed children shall be provided for, the child's need being the paramount consideration, undiscovered cases of underfeeding are reduced to a minimum. Where, on the contrary, enquiries are carried out in a deterrent manner, or the parent is made to apply in person for the meals, or the selection is based on a rigid application of a scale, there is reason to fear that considerable numbers of children are, and remain, "unable by reason of lack of food to take full advantage of the education provided for them."