11. After the Second World War, childcare professionals became anxious about the welfare of those children who had been “deprived of a normal home life” during the War. This led to the establishment of the Care of Children Committee (the Curtis Committee), which reported in 1946 (the Curtis report).[1]
12. The Curtis report noted that those selected for migration were only those “of fine physique and good mental equipment”, which it considered were “precisely the children for whom satisfactory openings could be found in this country”. On that basis it concluded that child migration as a “method of providing for the deprived child” was “not one that we would specifically wish to see extended”.[2]
13. The Curtis Committee concluded that migration should remain an option for “suitable” children who expressed a desire for it, but that they would “strongly deprecate their setting out in life under less thorough care and supervision than they would have at home”. On that basis they recommended that “it should be a condition of consenting to the emigration of deprived children that the arrangements made by the government of the receiving country for their welfare and aftercare should be comparable to those we have proposed in this report for deprived children remaining in this country” (our emphasis).[3]
14. The arrangements that the Curtis Committee had proposed for children remaining in the UK involved children being cared for in some kind of surrogate family care (i.e. fostering or adoption). Or, if institutional care were required, children should not be cared for in the type of large institutions that were common in the nineteenth century, but the “cottage homes” that had developed pre-War, with no more than around a dozen children, and a “surrogate mother” who was suitably trained.[4]
15. The Curtis report stated that children should go to the local school, be free to bring friends from school back to their cottage, be able to join the Boy Scouts or Girl Guides, go swimming and do things of that nature, have access to an up-to-date library, toys, games and a wireless and should generally have the same social experiences as if they were living with their natural parents.[5]
16. Moreover, every effort should be made to enable the children to remain in contact with their relatives (unless there was a basis for thinking that contact would do them harm). Corporal punishment should be entirely prohibited for the children irrespective of age and gender, given their particular vulnerability,[6] and “nagging, sneering, taunting indeed all methods which secure the ascendancy of the person in charge by destroying or lowering the self-esteem of the child” were deprecated.[7]
17. The Curtis report was a defining moment in the history of childcare in this country.[8]
The 1946 Curtis report set out clear expectations for future childcare practice and was explicit in its expectations of the care to be given to child migrants.
The evidence shows that the Curtis Committee recommendations were accepted by HMG, and the Home Office became responsible for their implementation at home and overseas.
However as will become apparent from our analysis that follows, HMG failed to ensure that the Curtis Committee expectations were implemented in respect of child migrants, and HMG has since accepted as much.[9]