The total number of individual children fed during the year 1912-13 was 100,771,[410] the average weekly number being 41,529. The numbers fed during the last thirteen years are seen in the following table:--[411]
Season. Average weekly number of children fed.
1900-01 (August to July inclusive) 18,857
These are necessitous children only. This number includes the necessitous children in the Defective Schools, except the Cripple Schools, where the meals are provided by the Cripple Children's Dinners Committee. (See post, pp. 155-6.)
Annual Report of London County Council for 1911, Vol. IV., p. 33. The figures for the earlier years are not reliable owing to the multiplicity of agencies providing food.
In the selection of the children the County Council has throughout pursued the policy of keeping the numbers fed as low as possible. The School Doctor may recommend for meals, or more frequently for milk or codliver oil, under-nourished children whom he discovers in the course of medical inspection,[412] but the number of such cases is comparatively small. As a rule the children are selected by the teachers (either on their own initiative or, more frequently, on the application of the parents) on the ground of poverty.
The teachers are asked to point out to the school doctor any children about to be inspected whose names are on the necessitous register. (London County Council, Handbook containing general information with reference to Children's Care, 1912, p. 18.)
The enquiry into the home circumstances of these children and the final decision as to which of them shall be fed, devolve upon the Care Committees. These Care Committees form the most striking feature of the administration of the Provision of Meals Act in London. In no other town have the services of the volunteer worker been utilised to such an extent.[413] As we have seen, the County Council decided in 1909 that a Children's Care Committee should be formed for every elementary school, and there is now practically no school for which a committee has not been appointed.[414] The committees consist of two or three of the School Managers, together with not less than four voluntary workers appointed by the Children's Care (Central) Sub-Committee.[415] The head teachers, though not members,[416] usually attend the meetings, and in some cases undertake a considerable amount of clerical work. The members of these committees number some 5,600,[417] but of these many take little or no part in the work, and the effective membership amounts perhaps to not more than two-thirds of this total.