ABSTRACT
Policy and practice therefore differ with regard to this type of admission and in some authorities the majority of adoptions are arranged after a period in care whilst in others most are direct placings. One kind of case which aroused a great deal of comment and disagreement among the sample children’s officers was the short-term emergency; a mother’s confinement or the temporary illness of one or both parents. In this context some children’s officers not only admitted to a fairly liberal policy with regard to cases of confinement and temporary illness, but also tried to arrange holidays for the children of broken or problem families, by taking them into care and sending them away to a camp or the seaside with their own children’s homes. Children’s officers who took a different view of delinquency naturally felt they had a far larger part to play in helping difficult children.
