In recent years, we see the inspectorate urging that even children of tender years ought not to live in the workhouse. This is a new idea which has not yet received more formal endorsement. As children under three may not, by the Central Authority's own order of 10th February 1899, be sent to a separate Poor Law school, there is as yet no place for them but the workhouse. "Nothing has been said," observed Mr. Jenner Fust, in 1901, "about the nursery children, at present retained at the workhouse till three years old, or even more, though the case of these requires attention as much as that of the older ones. They are almost always largely under the care of inmates, and the conditions are seldom improved even when these inmates are their own mothers.... I cannot but think that nursery homes with trained nurses as foster-mothers should form part of the equipment of all cottage homes, or, if a separate receiving home be established, the nursery children might conveniently be placed there, the removal from the workhouse not being delayed beyond the period when a child is able to walk."[611] [611] Mr. Jenner Fust's Report, in Thirtieth Annual Report, 1900-1, p. 147. With regard to the education of the older workhouse children the Central Authority has changed its policy. It does not actually forbid the guardians to arrange for a school within the workhouse, which was the policy of 1850. But the plan now favoured is to send them out to the public elementary schools, as is also done when they are placed in scattered homes. At first the Central Authority only sanctioned this course with reluctance, only when the number of such children was small, and with special recommendations as to the appointment of officers to supervise the children out of school hours and impart industrial training.[612] In the case of one union, they "urged the guardians to reconsider the question, with a view to the appointment either of a caretaker of the children or a porter, who could give that attention to the boys when in the workhouse which was of such importance to their future welfare."[613] Later, perhaps, when the principle of paid "caretakers" had become more fully accepted, the Central Authority gave the system much more hearty support, noted its prevalence with satisfaction, and considered it highly desirable that children in Poor Law establishments should thus be given opportunities of mixing with other children. [612] _Local Government Chronicle_, 22nd June 1878, p. 489. [613] _Hansard_, 6th September 1886, vol. 308, p. 1316.