Opieka komunalna nad dziećmi w działalności międzywojennego Zarządu Miasta Lublina
Municipal Childcare in the Activities of the Interwar Lublin City Board

Summary/Abstract: The concern for the youngest was given a special prominence in the social care system of the resurgent Polish State, both for humanitarian and political reasons. Pursuant to the Act of August 16, 1923 on social care, the obligation to provide and to finance social care was born by local governments units and among them by the communes. The aim of this article is to present the activity of the Department of Social Care of the Lublin City Board in the field of organizing care for children who, in accordance with the applicable legislation, were entitled to benefit from the commune assistance. To achieve this goal, the article primarily presents the functioning of Lublin care and educational institutions which provided help to the youngest. However, issues related to social care for adults and the sick remain outside the scope of this study. Another vital aim is to present the legal situation prevailing in Poland in the interwar period in the field of the development of legislation on social care, including childcare. To achieve the above presented goals, the author used mostly historical-legal method which consists in the examination and critical evaluation of the archival sources and legal phenomena. The statistical method was also broadly applied to present the numerical data illustrating the condition of social childcare organized by the Social Care Department of the Lublin City Board. The material base of this study was not only the literature on the subject, treating on the organization of the social care in the Second Polish Republic, but also archival and printed sources deposited in the National Archives in Lublin, i.e. series no. 7 – The Files of the Lublin City in the years 1918-1939. Mostly used were files of the Department of Social Care of Lublin City Board concerning the organization of the local care and educational institutions, statistic data and general reports on the activity of the Department of Social Care and reports on closed care, semi-open care, open care and other activities. Also, the reports concerning the care activity of the Department of Social Care, publicized in the Journal of the Lublin City Board [Dziennik Zarządu miasta Lublina] which was the official local government publisher of the executive body.

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