Abstract
A MEMOBANDUM on the Special Areas Bill dealing with the provision for additional food, etc., for mothers and children in distressed areas has been submitted to the Prime Minister by the Children's Minimum Council. The memorandum submits evidence of the inadequacy of incomes in distressed areas based, in respect of food, on figures given in “A Revised Estimate of the Poverty Line” by R. F. George (J. Roy. Statistical Soc). The figures indicate broadly the increasing extent to which the incomes of the unemployed fall below the requirements for health as the size of the family increases. Other evidence of the lack of nourishment of mothers and children in these areas is presented, and the limitations of the present provision by local authorities in England and Wales in consequence of the inability of local rates to support it are also reviewed and discussed. The memorandum urges that the Government should provide in the forthcoming Bill for grants from the national exchequer to local authorities in the Special Areas to cover the whole cost of the supply of free milk to all children in public elementary schools and to scholarship children in secondary schools; the supply of free school meals to all children belonging to families where the amount available for food falls below a scale to be determined by the Ministry of Health; the supply of free boots to school children in such families; and the supply of free milk to expectant and nursing mothers and to children under school age in such families.
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Additional Food for the Special Areas. Nature 139, 708 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/139708b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/139708b0