The Social Services of Modern England by M. Penelope Hall

Author:M. Penelope Hall [Hall, M. Penelope]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780415868600
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2013-10-16T00:00:00+00:00

2 Circular 2866, The Care of Illegitimate Children.

1 L. Young, op. cit., p. 170, ‘Regardless of her immediate circumstances, every unmarried mother has a vital need for protection and acceptance as a person. When a girl reaches a social agency, her first need is plainly and simply for a good friend.’

1 At present about 300 outdoor moral welfare workers are employed by organisations affiliated to the Church of England Moral Welfare Council, besides those working in connection with other denominations. A survey made in 1954 showed that apart from eleven dioceses which had failed to make returns, 16,011 illegitimate children were being helped. The Roman Catholic Church and the Salvation Army also undertake a considerable amount of work of this kind.

2 Under the 1926 Act legitimation was only possible if there were no bar to marriage at the time of the child’s birth. This limitation was removed by the 1959 Act.

1 A more detailed comparison of English and Scandinavian attitudes towards the illegitimate child and the provisions made for him may be found in an article by I. Pinchbeck, ‘Social Attitudes to the Problem of Illegitimacy’, British Journal of Sociology, Vol. V, 1954, pp. 309-22. The Scandinavian provisions are commended in L. Young, op. cit., pp. 124-6. Where there is some doubt as to which of two or three men may be the father, all names are registered, a situation which may harm rather than help the child.

2 A survey made by the Church of England Moral Welfare Council of the cases helped in 1952 showed that at the end of the year 15·1 per cent of the children had been adopted compared with 38·3 per cent actually in the mother’s care and 9·1 per cent in which the mother remained responsible for and had access to the child. Moral Welfare, January 1954, pp. 12-18. A follow-up survey made three years later of those cases where the child was not adopted in the first year revealed three subsequent adoptions, but it is suggested that in cases where the mother had a second illegitimate child the second child was adopted, the child in the survey remaining in care of the mother. Moral Welfare, January 1957, pp. 14-15. Cf. the placement of the 67 illegitimate children born in Newcastle-on-Tyne in May and June 1947. Nine were received for adoption within a few weeks of birth, three taken from the homes of the maternal grandmother later in the year. Spence, et al., op. cit., p. 144.

3 Spence et al., op. cit., p. 145. In 17 out of 67 Newcastle cases, the child entered the mother’s family. In the Leicester sample, 15 out of the 22 mothers who were single at the child’s conception, and who five years later were neither married nor cohabiting and had kept the child, were living with his grandparents. E. K. Macdonald, op. cit., p. 362.

1 Spence et al., op. cit., p. 145.

2 In 1956 the local authorities provided 27 such homes with 397 beds, voluntary homes known to the Ministry of Health numbered 107 with i,666 beds.

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