Chapter Four

Suffer the Little Children: Homesickness and Heartbreak – the Darker Side of Evacuation

Some of these stories make very difficult reading. Although many evacuees received loving care from their wartime foster parents, others did not. In 1939, only four female Ministry of Health inspectors had attended conferences on evacuation, contributing to the failure to foresee the conditions in which mothers and children would arrive, and the kind of services they would require. There were not enough local officials available to regularly inspect evacuees’ billets, so problems were not always picked up.