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THE CHILD WITHOUT A HOME
129 nuts is
proposed
as
providing valuable
sources
of Ba
vitamins and of protein (approximately 100 g. per lb.) and containing useful amounts of calcium and iron. Green leafy vegetables should be more widely consumed since they contain essential amino-acids, vitamin-A precursors, and some of the B vitamins. Since some diets are far below the average, Dr. Platt advises that more equal distribution of food should be promoted by price control and collective feeding. The immediate objective suggested in his report is a diet yielding 2500 calories, and containing 60 g. protein ; but he points out that even on such a diet full physiological efficiency will not be attained. A long-term policy will include the growth of improved varieties of crops, the proper use of fertilisers, and the concentration of cropping in the best growing season. (Strangely enough, no mention is made of the possibilities of fish and other sea foods as sources of the protein that the islanders need.) According to a statement by the Secretary of State for the Colonies on July 3, action on the report may shortly be expected. Efforts are being made to obtain " ennobled " flour from Canada ; trials of feeding children with skimmed milk and food yeast are proceeding ; and a nutrition working party seems to be formed. likely THE CHILD WITHOUT A HOME
THE child deprived of a normal home life finds his worst trouble in the fact that he belongs to nobody. Lady Allen of Hurtwood, in a memorandum on the evidence she gave last year to the Curtis Committee on the care of children, suggests that all children who lose their legal guardians should, either temporarily or throughout childhood, become wards of the State, by order of a court, and that the State should be responsible for their proper care and upbringing. Every such ward should have a personal trustee to look after his interests and administer his property if he has any. Trustees would have access to their wards whenever they liked, and would be free to select, with the help of the observation centres which have been foreshadowed, the kind of care most suited to the needs of the child, and to transfer him if it seemed that he would benefit by a change. Each trustee would be responsible for a number of children-she suggests 150 as a suitable number. She shares the view of the Curtis Committee that the child, before being placed, should be under skilled observation in one of the centres mentioned, so that the chances of his getting into an unsuitable environment will be much reduced. The great thing, as she points out, is to get every child absorbed into the full life of the community; and the best method, of course, is by adoption. A good and reliable foster-home comes next, but has the drawback that the child cannot be certain his place in it will be permanent. The small home with 8-10 children of mixed ages, with a married couple in charge, can be very successful, and Lady Allen suggests a promising variant of this in one of her footnotes : a married couple, presumably without children of their own, could be invited to act as foster-parents to a group of children, being suitably paid for doing so ; each year they would take on a baby, so that in time they would have a family of 6-8 children of ages similar to those found in an ordinary family, and would bring them up until they were settled in life. This sounds a thoroughly good plan, likely to give the children the security of ordinary home life, and to be a pleasure to the fosterparents if they are of the natural parental type. She objects cogently to grouped cottage homes that they do not make the children part of the ordinary community : the " mothers " are often childless widows or spinsters, the sexes are segregated, some 15-25 children occupy one cottage, often grouped according to age, and often they attend school within the community. It
is hard, as she says, to imagine anything less like a family group. Some children would benefit by education in boarding-schools of good type, provided they could be given a free family life during the holidays. To achieve this, each child, she thinks, might have a guardian who would act as a personal friend, welcome him into his home for the holidays, and help to launch him into the world. These part-time guardians would come from all levels of society, and would be selected by the child’s trustee in consultation with the school. They might be helped with maintenance grants during the school holidays. The child would thus have the sense of " belonging " to someone outside school. Lady Allen suggests that the entire maintenance cost of the child who becomes a ward of the State should be borne by the taxpayer, and that only one Government department-preferably the -Ministry of Educationshould have charge of him, though certain duties might be delegated to other departments or to local authorities. Her well-considered proposals would do much to give the child who loses his home the place in the community which counts so much in normal development, and of which he is at present so often deprived. DENTAL BENEFITS OF WAR
IT is an alluring and consolatory notion that war reduces the incidence of dental caries by imposing a diet comparable with that on which primitive man developed perfect teeth. But is it correct and as simple as all that At a meeting of the Norwegian Medical Society, reported in Nordisk Medisin for June 7, Dr. A. Collett pointed out that the incidence of dental caries in the larger Norwegian towns had begun to fall shortly before the late war, during which this fall was greatly enhanced. Early in 1938 the Norwegian Society for the Prevention of Dental Diseases started an intensive propaganda against denatured carbohydrates and on behalf of other dietetic reforms ; and it was in 1938 that the decline in dental caries began. Dr. Collett linked the reduction in dental caries during the war with the monotonous diet, low in calories and in fruit and vegetables. In the same period toothbrushes and dental pastes became scarce, and the growth and weight-increase of Oslo school-children showed a wellmarked decline. The consumption of sugar fell from 87 to 30 g. per day per head, and sweets were unobtainable. In Dr. Collett’s opinion the relationship of dental caries to food is quite plain, and he quotes Grothe with approbation as saying : " It irritates people that truth is so simple." At the same meeting Dr. T. Gythfeldt, senior school dentist in Oslo, declined to regard the problem of dental caries as practically solved. He pointed out that between 1936 and 1940 there was a considerable rise in _the consumption of - sugar and chocolate, and yet the- incidence of dental caries fell sharply in the same period. Again, though the incidence of caries has also declined in Sweden, that country had plenty of chocolate throughout the war, and its consumption of sugar per head was higher than that of Norway before the war. In Norway since 1940 there was a remarkable decrease not only in the consumption of sugar and chocolate but also in that of meat, vegetables, fruit, cheese, and butter. On the other hand, the consumption of fish and cod-liver oil rose, and a greater use was made of calcium and vitamin preparations. " Before the war," said Dr. Gythfeldt, " there was a steady rise in the use of milk, milk products, fruit, vegetables, and cod-liver oil. During the war we have advocated calcium and vitamin preparations. Children’s teeth are better not because of the war but in spite of the war." The explanation may yet be forthcoming, for the Norwegian Society for the Prevention of Dental Diseases has offered a prize for the best investigation into the causes of the decline of dental caries during the war.
proposed
as
providing valuable
sources
of Ba
vitamins and of protein (approximately 100 g. per lb.) and containing useful amounts of calcium and iron. Green leafy vegetables should be more widely consumed since they contain essential amino-acids, vitamin-A precursors, and some of the B vitamins. Since some diets are far below the average, Dr. Platt advises that more equal distribution of food should be promoted by price control and collective feeding. The immediate objective suggested in his report is a diet yielding 2500 calories, and containing 60 g. protein ; but he points out that even on such a diet full physiological efficiency will not be attained. A long-term policy will include the growth of improved varieties of crops, the proper use of fertilisers, and the concentration of cropping in the best growing season. (Strangely enough, no mention is made of the possibilities of fish and other sea foods as sources of the protein that the islanders need.) According to a statement by the Secretary of State for the Colonies on July 3, action on the report may shortly be expected. Efforts are being made to obtain " ennobled " flour from Canada ; trials of feeding children with skimmed milk and food yeast are proceeding ; and a nutrition working party seems to be formed. likely THE CHILD WITHOUT A HOME
THE child deprived of a normal home life finds his worst trouble in the fact that he belongs to nobody. Lady Allen of Hurtwood, in a memorandum on the evidence she gave last year to the Curtis Committee on the care of children, suggests that all children who lose their legal guardians should, either temporarily or throughout childhood, become wards of the State, by order of a court, and that the State should be responsible for their proper care and upbringing. Every such ward should have a personal trustee to look after his interests and administer his property if he has any. Trustees would have access to their wards whenever they liked, and would be free to select, with the help of the observation centres which have been foreshadowed, the kind of care most suited to the needs of the child, and to transfer him if it seemed that he would benefit by a change. Each trustee would be responsible for a number of children-she suggests 150 as a suitable number. She shares the view of the Curtis Committee that the child, before being placed, should be under skilled observation in one of the centres mentioned, so that the chances of his getting into an unsuitable environment will be much reduced. The great thing, as she points out, is to get every child absorbed into the full life of the community; and the best method, of course, is by adoption. A good and reliable foster-home comes next, but has the drawback that the child cannot be certain his place in it will be permanent. The small home with 8-10 children of mixed ages, with a married couple in charge, can be very successful, and Lady Allen suggests a promising variant of this in one of her footnotes : a married couple, presumably without children of their own, could be invited to act as foster-parents to a group of children, being suitably paid for doing so ; each year they would take on a baby, so that in time they would have a family of 6-8 children of ages similar to those found in an ordinary family, and would bring them up until they were settled in life. This sounds a thoroughly good plan, likely to give the children the security of ordinary home life, and to be a pleasure to the fosterparents if they are of the natural parental type. She objects cogently to grouped cottage homes that they do not make the children part of the ordinary community : the " mothers " are often childless widows or spinsters, the sexes are segregated, some 15-25 children occupy one cottage, often grouped according to age, and often they attend school within the community. It
is hard, as she says, to imagine anything less like a family group. Some children would benefit by education in boarding-schools of good type, provided they could be given a free family life during the holidays. To achieve this, each child, she thinks, might have a guardian who would act as a personal friend, welcome him into his home for the holidays, and help to launch him into the world. These part-time guardians would come from all levels of society, and would be selected by the child’s trustee in consultation with the school. They might be helped with maintenance grants during the school holidays. The child would thus have the sense of " belonging " to someone outside school. Lady Allen suggests that the entire maintenance cost of the child who becomes a ward of the State should be borne by the taxpayer, and that only one Government department-preferably the -Ministry of Educationshould have charge of him, though certain duties might be delegated to other departments or to local authorities. Her well-considered proposals would do much to give the child who loses his home the place in the community which counts so much in normal development, and of which he is at present so often deprived. DENTAL BENEFITS OF WAR
IT is an alluring and consolatory notion that war reduces the incidence of dental caries by imposing a diet comparable with that on which primitive man developed perfect teeth. But is it correct and as simple as all that At a meeting of the Norwegian Medical Society, reported in Nordisk Medisin for June 7, Dr. A. Collett pointed out that the incidence of dental caries in the larger Norwegian towns had begun to fall shortly before the late war, during which this fall was greatly enhanced. Early in 1938 the Norwegian Society for the Prevention of Dental Diseases started an intensive propaganda against denatured carbohydrates and on behalf of other dietetic reforms ; and it was in 1938 that the decline in dental caries began. Dr. Collett linked the reduction in dental caries during the war with the monotonous diet, low in calories and in fruit and vegetables. In the same period toothbrushes and dental pastes became scarce, and the growth and weight-increase of Oslo school-children showed a wellmarked decline. The consumption of sugar fell from 87 to 30 g. per day per head, and sweets were unobtainable. In Dr. Collett’s opinion the relationship of dental caries to food is quite plain, and he quotes Grothe with approbation as saying : " It irritates people that truth is so simple." At the same meeting Dr. T. Gythfeldt, senior school dentist in Oslo, declined to regard the problem of dental caries as practically solved. He pointed out that between 1936 and 1940 there was a considerable rise in _the consumption of - sugar and chocolate, and yet the- incidence of dental caries fell sharply in the same period. Again, though the incidence of caries has also declined in Sweden, that country had plenty of chocolate throughout the war, and its consumption of sugar per head was higher than that of Norway before the war. In Norway since 1940 there was a remarkable decrease not only in the consumption of sugar and chocolate but also in that of meat, vegetables, fruit, cheese, and butter. On the other hand, the consumption of fish and cod-liver oil rose, and a greater use was made of calcium and vitamin preparations. " Before the war," said Dr. Gythfeldt, " there was a steady rise in the use of milk, milk products, fruit, vegetables, and cod-liver oil. During the war we have advocated calcium and vitamin preparations. Children’s teeth are better not because of the war but in spite of the war." The explanation may yet be forthcoming, for the Norwegian Society for the Prevention of Dental Diseases has offered a prize for the best investigation into the causes of the decline of dental caries during the war.