This was introduced in order to reduce the outbreaks of disease, which were very frequent at the time. Although this step helped improve national health levels in children, there were no such measures introduced after school life. The fact that there was no National Health Service introduced shows that although the Liberals attempted to improve the welfare of children, they did not improve the health conditions of adults or school leavers.
Finally, the Children's act of 1908 introduced a consolidation of measures to deal with child neglect and abuse and set up juvenile courts and remand homes to remove child offenders from the adult courts and prisons. This Act ensured children were not living on the streets without food or education. The attempts made to improve child welfare were eventually successful, but the time taken to enforce all the legislation means the laws passed only helped improve conditions for some children during the period from 1906 to 1914.
The second target for the Liberals was the welfare of old age pensioners. Poverty was high as they had no successful financial backing from the government and could not make enough money working. The Old Age Pensions Act was introduced in 1908. The Act provided for pensions of 5s per week to be paid to those aged 70 or over who had annual incomes of .
21 or less. For incomes over 21 a sliding scale of descending, graduated payments would be made up to a ceiling of a 31 annual income, at which point the payments ceased. Although this legislation did help to improve the social conditions of many pensioners and help to prevent extreme poverty, there were many exclusions. Those who had claimed poor relief in the previous year or had been in prison in the previous ten years had no entitlement. Also excluded were those who had failed to work regularly. The government did reduce the qualifying period for ex-convicts to two years to attempt to widen the success of this Act.
