Other factors might have contributed to neglectful supervision and inadequate care. Definitely the growing emphasis in the twentieth century on the use of residential schools for orphans, children of broken or troubled homes, and youngsters whose behaviour could not be handled in day schools was significant. Of course, there had always been an emphasis on using the schools to provide for orphans, from the days of John West's school in Red River to the 1880s and 1890s, when attempts were made to solve the recruitment problems at new industrial schools such as Battleford and Dunbow by searching out children who had been abandoned or orphaned.

      The inadequate child 'care' that prevailed in most institutions throughout the history of the residential schools had many sources and multiple consequences. The evidence that most children felt neglected, ill fed, badly clothed, and inadequately looked after in medical terms is overwhelming. The causes of this syndrome were almost as numerous as the effects. The chronic underfunding and lack of vigorous oversight by the Department of Indian Affairs were certainly major factors. So, too, were the racist assumptions that figured in the thoughts and reactions of too many missionaries. The heavy responsibility, hard work, and long hours that most school workers had to put in until the very late years of the residential school system's existence exacerbated the situation. The fact that the twentieth-century student body was increasingly composed of young people who did not have parents to check on their welfare and act on their complaints was also at work in many cases. Finally, serious defects in the character and training of many residential school workers also contributed to the prevalence of neglect and lack of care, just as it did to the even more serious problem of abuse in the schools.