[Report 1944] / School Medical Officer of Health, Leeds City.

  • Leeds (England). City Council.
Date:
1944
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1944] / School Medical Officer of Health, Leeds City. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    8/24 (page 8)
    I he following Fable shows the great expansion which has been effected during 1944 :— Date Numt >er of Daily number of Kitchens Dining Canteens Dinners supplied Breakfasts Teas Jan. 1944 7 IOO 10,652 34i 1,508 Dec. 1944 12 165 16,279 265 1.501 The total number of meals served throughout the year was Breakfasts Dinners Teas 78.738 2,816,039 377,061 Total .. .. 3,271,838 Of the dinners, 285,793 were free and 2,530,246 were paid for. The charge remained at 4d. a dinner. Breakfasts and teas were all paid for at 2d. a meal. The number of children receiving free dinners varied between 1,040 and 1,360 a day during the year. A feature to be deplored is the great fall in the number of children having school dinners during the holiday periods. The following Table shows this clearly :— Easter Whitsuntide Midsummer Christmas Daily attendances before holiday— Free Paid 1,279 9,469 1,359 11,132 1,1.35 12,068 1,296 14,060 During holiday— Free Paid 704 2,620 635 3,379 594 2,669 648 2.745 After holiday— Free Paid 1,289 8,547 1,339 10,600 1,036 9,221 1,122 10,097 It will be seen that, while the number of free or necessitous cases drops by about 50 per cent, as soon as the holiday begins, about 70 per cent, of the children whose parents pay for dinners cease to attend at the same time. Many of the paying children come from homes where both parents are understood to be in the Services or at work so that there is no-one to prepare a hot mid-day meal. This makes the decrease in attendance during the holidays extremely difficult to explain or justify.