DOMESTIC SERVICE

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 84, 3 January 1930, Page 2

DOMESTIC SERVICE

WOMEN’S TRAINING CENTRES

EXPERIMENT IN ENGLAND

During the past eight years many thousands of young women and girls have passed through home training centres established by the Central Committee on Women’s Training and Employment, and, with few exceptions, they have been placed in domestic service, the one career which offers almost unlimited scope for the woman worker. The training has been given, for the most part, at day training centres organised in different parts of the country, but the committee is shortly to open at Leamington a centre which will be completely residential and where the women sent for training will take a concentrated course lasting from eight to ten weeks.

Newbold Beeches, a house with several acres of land attached, and within easy reach of the middle of Leamington, has been acquired for the centre, and is now being adapted to accommodate about 40 students and the instructional staff. The women and girls to be trained will be drawn chiefly from the mining areas where unemployment is still extensive, and as it is anticipated that the majority of them will obtain positions in Learnington and the surrounding. towns, friendships made during the training course may be maintained. The students will be taught the elements of cookery, laundrywork, and housework under fullyqualified teachers, aud they will also learn to make their own uniforms and receive some simple instruction in hygiene. The cost of the centre will be met from the grant made by the Ministry of Labour to the Central Committee on Women’s Training and Employment. £3OOO a Year. The committee has been carrying on its present work since 1920 aud now trains about 3000 women aud girls every year. In view of the difficulty of finding any other occupation for which women could be trained that was not already overcrowded the available funds are now concentrated on domestic work. Many of the women are drawn from a class that has had some employment in factories, shops and offices, but others, chiefly from the colliery villages, have had no work at all except in their own homes. When the mining industry was comparatively prosperous and a father and two or three sons were regularly employed at the pits there was sufficient for the girls to do at home. Now tbere’is the necessity that the girls should earn their own living and in the majority of cases domestic service offers the only outlet. While attending the centres they receive a weekly maintenance allowance, and cheap and nourishing meals arc prepared by the girls themselves as a part of their training. The day courses of trailing last three months. No claim is made that the women are then in any sense fully trained or experienced cooks or housemaids, as the knowledge of the various branches of domestic work which can be imparted in’the time is only rudimentary, but the instruction is sufficient to enable the “trainees” to take domestic posts in households where some supervision can be given at first. Figures available for the last nine months of 1928 show that of 2481 women and girls who’completed a course 746 were found local domestic employment and 1443 were placed in domestic service away from home. Success of Trainees. Tiie general experience is that those who are provided with positions do well, and in a short time become capable maids. A certain number prove unadaptable wheu they have to work alone, aud home sickness is sometimes a trouble with girls who have never been away from home before. The trainees are selected from the unemployed registers of the unemployment exchanges. The age limit for admission for girls is 16 to 18, and for women it is 18 to 25. Vacancies open to the young people when they have completed it course can be notified to the manager of the employment exchange in the pros-

pective employer’s district, or to the .superintendent of a training centre. It is stated to be important that when applying for a maid the employer should give the fullest particulars of the duties required, the number of other maids kept, if any, the number of persons iu the family, the wages offered, and the sleeping accommodation to be provided. It is hoped that the residential centre at Leamington will be ready to receive s women for the first course before the end of this year, but no date can yet be fixed for the opening. The centre should be a useful development of the present scheme of training, as it will familiarise the students in a practical way with tne day-to-day routine of household duties.