The action to which we have already referred as having been taken by the Metropolitan Asylum Board, arising out of the Act of 1870, forms a useful experiment for the consideration and possible guidance of those engaged in endeavouring to provide for the training and custody of idiots and imbeciles, not in the metropolis alone, but the country.
After full discussion, the Charity Organization Committee resolved "that the arrangement which has been made for idiots, imbeciles, and harmless lunatics in the Metropolitan Asylum District is applicable in its main principles to the rest of England, viz. that they should be removed from workhouses and county lunatic asylums, and that young persons of those classes should be suitably educated and trained." Seeing that experience clearly proves that the voluntary principle is a failure, or at least wholly inadequate, for it only touches the fringe of the difficulty, it becomes absolutely necessary that the State should step in and supplement charitable effort. The Acts at present in force are possibly sufficiently elastic to provide for the want, if there was a determination on the part of the authorities in the various counties to avail themselves of them; but it is quite certain that no steps will be taken to do so, unless a new Act makes a distinct and special provision for the education and training of the idiot classes.
It appeared just to the Committee that not only should the local rates provide, as they do at the present time, for the charge of this class, but that assistance should be granted out of the public revenue; the best mode for such assistance being in the form of advances for the buildings required on easy terms, liberal capitation grants for young people under training, and grants of less amount for adults.
It is obvious that an idiot, while under the process of education, is at least as much entitled to the capitation grant allowed by the Education Department as the school children of the non-idiotic class.
A certain sum would also be received from the families of some of the inmates of the training schools and custodial institutions. It is proposed that those families which, although able to pay their way under ordinary circumstances, could not possibly defray the entire cost, should pay according to their means. As in the case of the blind and the deaf and dumb, it is considered that the relief given to children should not be counted as parochial relief to their parents.