cases.

are constantly expressing medical and legal problems in terms of Dr. Richard C. Cabot's "Differential Diagnosis" is an evidence of something that we should have in social work. The problem of the best kind of foster care, whether in families or in institutions, could best be stated and understood if we had monographs giving histories and treatments of given groups of children: children related; children without relatives or brothers or sisters; children with no special problems, others with very special problems of health, impaired minds, or bad habits.

Returning to the matter of adoptions, it would throw great light upon a most important question if certain organizations dealing with neglected adoptive children could study and re-state for the public the histories and treatment of the children involved and give especially the reasons why these children had to be removed a second time often from homes of neglect.

The case method is also admirable for use in weighing the advantages and disadvantages of the community in which an effort is to be made to place children in families as against giving them institutional care. There are many communities in the United States offering less than a proper minimum in the way of social life. The schools are poor, the terms are short, industrial opportunities are nil, housing is bad, the country is sparsely settled, it is folly for any children's worker to contend that where such conditions prevail proper family life with necessary neighborhood contacts will be found in sufficient quantity always to provide for all the children in need of care.

The tendency of many of the child-placing agencies to sing the praises of the ideal home and then to dodge so far as actual work is concerned the care and adequate training of the more difficult children referred to them, with particularly serious results at the time of adolescence, has thrown upon the institutions a very difficult task. This has particular reference to the giving of care to dependent or neglected older boys and girls. Every well-informed child-placing agency knows that when children of twelve or thirteen or fourteen. years are referred for care, the problem of treatment, and the certainty of good results, are very different from the cases of much younger children.

The family agency in receiving a child at this age has a much more difficult if not impossible task in building it into the texture.

of a family. Years of neglect make most necessary for the particular child very intensive, special care and not every good home, good from the standpoint of morals, cleanliness, intelligence, etc., is able to provide that accumulation of interests which the adolescent child demands and has to have. The psychology of this particular children's situation has not been shaped up, at least so as to affect the work of children's organizations as a whole.

A certain type of institution, the like of which is rare, might be so effective in giving care to these older children, or children who arrive at a period of dependency at a late age, as to be in advance of the family agencies; but there should be no uncertainty about it and either of the plans can be entered upon with certainty only if the histories and treatment of each child involved are studied and the combined experiences properly interpreted.

The extent to which institutional care is given by the Catholic. Church to its children is a cause for constant comment, especially as this holds with reference to little children, because if there is flexibility in methods, these are the very children that are most easy to place in families. The difficulty of getting enough Catholic families into which these children might go has been offered by some as a reason for the institutional emphasis. The experience, however, of the New York Department of Charities in placing large numbers of Catholic children in homes of their own faith and in a district as congested as the area surrounding greater New York would seem in a measure to dispute this contention. It is also important to note the work of the Massachusetts State Board of Charity in placing its wards in homes of their own faith.

In the giving of foster care, whether in institutions or families, there are other special considerations having a particular religious significance. With this constant emphasis on training along certain sectarian lines as laid down by various religious denominations, there is interjected a special difficulty from the placing out standpoint. Good case work, irrespective of any interest in any particular religious creed, will see to it that a child is placed generally in a home of its own religious belief; that is, a Catholic child in a Catholic home, a Protestant child in a Protestant home, a Jewish child in a Jewish home. Now, it frequently happens that a home thought of for a particular child is good on every count except that it is of a different religious belief. Frequently the argument is heard that

placement in this home for the child in question can have no serious effect on the child. It will be allowed to continue its own religious life, and the utmost respect will be paid to its own religious opinions. Holding liberal religious views, the writer of this article feels that such an argument is wrong.

Growing out of experience with a variety of children's problems, one does realize that the statement made above that few children are without ties of relationship which can be severed completely, is indisputably true. The child's early religious training results in the formation of certain interests and possessions which cannot be lightly dropped. Therefore, while a child will benefit physically and in many ways socially by care in a good home of other than its own faith, conflicts are presented to the child which affect it most seriously in its later reunion with family and friends. An element of doubt on a hitherto undebatable subject is injected at a time when the child is often least able to get his proper bearings. This would seem to lead to the plan that familiar religious atmospheres and training must be continued for a child when receiving foster care, involving as it may institutional care. There is the further argument that unless a child is placed in his old religious atmosphere, he will wander from a particular religious denomination and may thus be lost to the membership of a particular church, a spirit of propaganda for which the writer has no sympathy.

Careful follow-up records should be kept by every family or institutional organization of the foster homes in use; that is, after the initial reception investigation with all of its ramifications has been made and a decision to use the home has been reached, then all further contacts with that home should be summarized and entered on the record, so that the home's training and development under the direction of good family visitors, the results of care given to the different children received into the home, and the reasons for success or failure in given instances, should all be there. The records should also show changes in the family structure. In so many instances the children's agencies are prone to forget that the family organization as presented at the time when first used will not last forever, and that a very good home, good because certain members were there, may become a very bad home because certain members have died or left. An illustration of this is the home of a deserted wife whose husband had long been away, and whose children showed

the effects of her good training. Her home was an excellent training place for children who had been deprived of their own parents, but became a very bad place especially for girls when the husband returned and the wife, out of a mistaken sense of responsibility, felt she could not turn him out of doors.

Under such a record system, the visitors would be so accurately and completely informed as to choose the foster homes with greater certainty of success. If a number of children's organizations were to keep such family records, it would then be possible to show under what family conditions the children, with all of their varying personalities, best develop. It would also be possible to show the homes that had been rejected or later disapproved because of the development of conditions which were not evident or were not discoverable at the time of their acceptance. Monographs on such records of experience would help all children's workers and every intelligent social worker dealing with children's problems would have a new value placed on her best work.

The country is in the midst of its greatest social crisis. No children's organization need feel that more careful study will lead to its elimination for if it base all of its work on good case studies the treatment will be of the right sort. Case work with children means knowing them and when intelligent people know them they treat them wisely. Knowledge here is power to do the right thing.

ESSENTIALS OF CASE TREATMENT WITH DELINQUENT

CHILDREN

BY HENRY W. THURSTON,

Member of Staff, The New York School of Philanthropy.

So far as case treatment of delinquent children depends upon the authority of courts it is necessarily limited and colored by the provision of the law establishing those courts; by the personality and judicial methods of the judges; and by the public opinion that created and sustains the laws. It is, therefore, a first requisite to continuous good case treatment of juvenile delinquents that there be a right attitude of the public mind, and that this attitude be expressed in laws and court procedure which will permit and encourage good case treatment of the individual delinquent. A brief reference to the public opinion which found legal expression in the Roman law, the penal code of France and the English common law, compared with the American law which in many states gives a juvenile court chancery jurisdiction, will illustrate the necessity of a right attitude of the public mind towards young offenders as a basis for right case treatment.

THE BASIS OF CASE TREATMENT IN PUBLIC OPINION AND LAW

The Roman criminal law treated the adult differently from the child by making a gradation from non-punishability-seven years, through stages of "impuberes" (for boys till 14, for girls till 12) and "minority" to full maturity at 25 years. The amount of punishment varied according to these gradations in age though not by a definite scale. There was no special judicial procedure or special punitive institutions for juvenile offenders.

The penal code of France similarly distinguished between an adult and a child, placing the dividing line at 16 years. For offenders under 16, the law provided that if a child acted without "discernement" he was to be acquitted and either returned to his parents or sent to a house of correction for a definite time which must end when the offender reached the age of 20 years. If the offender under 16 acted with "discernement" he was to be pun