Sixth report on the work of the Children's Department, May, 1951.

  • Great Britain. Home Office. Children's Department.
Date:
1953
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sixth report on the work of the Children's Department, May, 1951. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    78/168 (page 66)
    (formerly called the Liverpool Farm School), under the leadership of the headmaster. This is an intermediate school admitting boys aged thirteen and fourteen. When it was decided some years ago to add a classifying school on the same site, the managers and headmaster undertook to construct the new buildings as a project of the training departments in the building and allied trades. This has been carried through to completion by the boys alone, working under the supervision of their instructors. More than two thousand tons of soil were moved in levelling the site, and the drainage, bricklaying, plastering, wiring, in fact, the whole building of the new premises, to accommodate one hundred boys, were executed without outside assistance. Other schools with building departments have carried through successfully projects such as the building of staff houses or school extensions, but the scale of the Red Bank School project makes it an enterprise worthy of high praise. AFTER CARE 252. Statutory responsibility for after care rests with the managers of the approved schools. It is an integral part of the system that the personal in- fluences and loyalties created in the course of approved school training should not come to an end with the termination of residence, and that those who have prepared boys and girls to regain their place in society should continue to be responsible for them during the process of readjustment to life in the world outside the school. 253. There is first the time on licence, which is the unexpired period of detention authorised by the approved school order. The period of detention authorised by an order is three years, except that children under the age of twelve years and four months at the date of committal may be detained until on committal can be detained only up to the age of nineteen. Boys and girls are released on licence to their own homes, or to suitable foster-homes or lodgings. Those over school leaving age are placed in employment by the managers. During the period of licence, the managers have the power to direct the boy (or girl) where to live, and to recall him to the school. The period of licence, which commonly lasts not much longer than a year, is followed by a statutory period of supervision which lasts, for those who leave the school before reaching the age of fifteen, until the age of eighteen, or, for those who leave after reaching fifteen for a period of three years, or until the age of twenty-one, whichever is the shorter. During the period of supervision, the manager’s duty is to cause the boy or girl to be visited, and to advise, befriend and assist him (if necessary, financially). They cannot control his movements or associations, and have the power of recalling him to the school for only a limited period. 254. Before 1933, the authorised period of detention in a reformatory or industrial school was fixed by statute at five years, and in many schools the children stayed for the greater part of this period. It followed, therefore, that the number of boys and girls under the supervision of the managers on after care was comparatively small, and it was the practice for after care to be carried out mainly by visits from members of the school staff or by arrangement with “local friends ’’ who might be probation officers or other social workers, or any agency selected by the managers.