The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt

[Original version of the column. Text in red are tagged with <sic> (needs correction); text in purple are tagged with <orig> (needs regularization); and text in blue are tagged names of persons or organizations. View emended version]

      

HYDE PARK, Tuesday—I wonder how many of my readers saw the report made after a year's study by the National Commission on Children in Wartime. The members of this commission were appointed in 1942 and reappointed in 1944 by Miss Katherine Lenroot, chief of the Children's Bureau, U. S. Department of Labor. They were people who knew about child health, welfare and education. They belonged to organizations which worked in the interests of children. There were also representatives of government and labor in the group. They used, during their period of research and planning, the advice and assistance of the staff in the Children's Bureau.

* * *

In the past, our Federal government has made grants of somewhere around 6 million dollars a year to state health departments for maternal and child health. The National Commission urges that this be raised to 50 million dollars at once. Similarly, they say that Federal support to state crippled children's agencies, which is now less than 4 million dollars a year, should be increased to 25 million dollars. In addition there should be a major increase in annual appropriations to state welfare departments, so that there may be state-wide coverage of child welfare agencies within the next ten years.

They have set goals to be obtained in every state, but these goals will not be obtained without aid. The commission says, for instance, that adequate medical care and health services should be given to mothers and to children from babyhood through adolescence. This means the establishment of health centers, clinics and hospital care for maternity patients. It means wide expansion of school health service in all schools, both academic and vocational. It does not mean a cursory examination and a notice sent to parents telling them what should be done, and no follow-up to find out if anything has been done. It means a dental care program, starting with children as they enter school and continuing through all their school years. It means a mental health program so that we will not examine young men of 18 in the future and find that four out of every ten have physical and mental handicaps.

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The foregoing is what the commission feels should happen merely in the health field. But they go into some more fundamental questions. They say there should be family insurance against loss of income from unemployment, disability, old age and death. There should be the widest kind of educational opportunity for every child according to the abilities that child develops. We have wasted a great deal of ability in the past by giving so little free higher education. A study should be made immediately of how this may be made available, regardless of income, to such children as show talent in various fields.

E. R.

(COPYRIGHT 1945 BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC.)


Names and Terms Mentioned or Referenced

Persons
Organizations
  • National Commission on Children in Wartime (U.S.) [ index ]
         [ LC ]
  • United States. Children's Bureau [ index ]
         [ LC | ISNI | VIAF | Wikidata | SNAC | FAST ]
  • United States. Dept. of Labor [ index ]
         [ LC ]
Geographic
  • Hyde Park (Dutchess County, N.Y., United States) [ index ]
Other Terms and Topics


About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, June 27, 1945

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
[ ERPP bio | LC | VIAF | WorldCat | DPLA | Wikidata | SNAC ]

Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007

  • Brick, Christopher (Editor)
    [ VIAF | ORCID ]
  • Regenhardt, Christy (Associate Editor)
    [ ISNI ]
  • Black, Allida M. (Editor)
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  • Binker, Mary Jo (Associate Editor)
    [ VIAF | ORCID ]
  • Alhambra, Christopher C. (Electronic Text Editor)
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Digital edition published 2008, 2017 by
The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project

Available under licence from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

Published with permission from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

MEP edition publlished on June 30, 2008.

TEI-P5 edition published on April 28, 2017.

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Transcription created from a photocopy of a UFS wire copy of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.
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