VISCOUNT ENPIELDasked Her Majesty's Government, Whether the Local 515 Government Board have issued any fresh instructions or regulations with reference to the boarding-out of pauper children since the statement of the Lord President of the Council on that subject on the 5th of July, 1877?
§ VISCOUNT CRANBROOKreplied, that two classes of pauper children were boarded out—those boarded out within the Union, and those outside the Union. The cases which had given rise to the noble Lord's Question were of two children who had been boarded within the Union, and they had undoubtedly been subjected to gross neglect. Since then—in September last—rules had been made with regard to pauper children boarded within the Union, which will, it is hoped, work very satisfactorily. In these rules it was laid down that the medical officer should report on the sanitary state of the house where it was proposed children should be boarded, and that not more than two children should be boarded together unless they belonged to the same family. The children were to be brought up as members of the family where they were boarded. The boarding-house was to be within two miles of a school; and the children were to be placed in families of the same religious opinions as their parents. The relieving officer was to pay the money weekly, and at the house, so that he would have the children continually under his eye; the medical officer was to visit them once a fortnight. Each case was to be reported to the Board of Guardians at the end of every quarter, and a general return was to be made annually. Two thousand five hundred children were now boarded out within Unions; outside the Unions the number of children boarded out were 423.