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At a meeting of the National Conference at Kansas City, May 15-22, 1918, two hundred and fifty delegates registered as members of this Division. The Division Committee, as appointed at the 1917 conference at Pittsburgh, is shown on the opposite page. Ten meetings for discussion were held, as follows:

PAGES

May 16, 11 a. m., "The Children's Year and After" 62

May 17, 8:15 p. m., "The Development of Work for Children, and the Present Opportunity" (general session).... 47

May 18, 9:15 a.m., "A Community Recreation Program for

Juveniles" 65

May 18, 11 a.m., "The National Problem of Malnutrition

Among Children of School Age" 68

May 18, 12:45 p.m., "Inter-relations of the School and So-
cial Work" 82

May 20, 9:15 a. m., "Minimum Standards of Child Protec-
tion and Home Care" 82

May 20, 11a. m., "Social Work in Rural Communities".... 83

May 21, 9:15 a. m., "The Problem of the Unmarried Mother and Her Child" 91

May 22, 11a. m., "Physical and Mental Diagnosis of School

Children" 109

The two meetings on May 20th were joint sessions with the National Probation Association.

On May 16th, at 12:45, the Division met at luncheon. At 1:45 a business session was held, the chairman being Henry W. Thurston, of New York, and the secretary, C. C. Carstens, of Boston.

The business of selecting the Division Committee for the ensuing year was introduced.

On motion of F. H. Nibecker of Pennsylvania it was voted that the Division proceed to the election of two-thirds of the previous membership.

On motion of H. H. Hart of New York it was voted that the committee consist of 21 and that the chairman, vice-chairman and secretary be included in the membership.

On motion of Arthur W. Towne of Brooklyn it was voted that five members be chosen as a nominating committee to nominate 21 members of the Division Committee, two-thirds of them being from the present membership.

On motion of Otto W. Davis of Minneapolis it was voted that the chairman and vice-chairman be designated from the Division Committee.

The chairman then announced the Committee on Nominations, as follows: Arthur W. Towne, Chairman; Florence Van Sickler, St. Louis; Marcus C. Fagg, Jacksonville, Fla.; W. L. Kuser, Eldora, Iowa; Father O'Neill, Rochester, N. Y.

A second business session of the Division was held on May 18th, at 12:45 p. m., Mr. Thurston presiding.

The report of the Committee on Nominations as made by Mr. Towne, chairman, was adopted, resulting in the selection of the Division Committee as listed in Part B, Sec. 3, appendix of this volume.

(Signed) HENRY W. THURSTON, Chairman.

C. C. CARSTENS, Secretary.

A PLAN FOR CONTINUITY OF ACTIVITY FOR THE DIVISION ON CHILDREN, OF THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE •

Committee Report, by the Chairman, Henry W. Thurston, New York School of Philanthropy

This is the first year in which the Committee on Children has been created with the prospect of a continuing membership. By the new rules of organization at least two-thirds of the committee will hold over from year to year. It is possible also and desirable that the same secretary may be continued for several years. The opportunity is therefore now offered to begin a series of programs with some historical perspective that shall have some coherent plan of continuity during successive years.

Another reason for giving time perspective to the report of the committee for this year is the fact that twenty-five years have passed since, at Chicago in 1893, the Committee on Children presented to the National Conference a complete volume (XIII-f-320 pp.) entitled, "History of Child Saving in the United States." This volume included an introduction by the chairman of the committee and thirteen signed monographs. The titles and writers were:

Introduction, C. D. Randall, chairman.

The Children's Aid Society of New York; Its History, Plans and Results, Charles Loring Brace.

Family Life vs. Institution Life, Miss Sophie E. Minton.

The Massachusetts System of Caring for State Minor Wards, Mrs. Anne B. Richardson.

Non-sectarian Endowed Child-saving Institutions, Lyman P. Alden. The Kindergarten in Its Bearings Upon Crime, Pauperism and Insanity, Mrs. Sarah B. Cooper.

Saving the Children; Sixteen Years' Work Among the Dependent Youth of Chicago, Oscar L. Dudley.

The History of Child-saving Work in Connecticut, Mrs. Virginia T. Smith. Children's Homes in Ohio, S. J. Hathaway. Child-Saving Work in Pennsylvania, Homer Folks.

The History of Child-saving Work in the State of New York, William Pryor Letchworth.

State Public Schools for Dependent and Neglected Children, G. A. Merrill.

Statement from the Trustees of the State Primary and Reform Schools of Massachusetts, Mrs. Glendower Evans.

The Catholic Protectory of New York; Its Spirit and Its Workings from Its Origin to the Present. (Appendix.)

It will be noted that all of these papers, except the one on the kindergarten, related to the care of dependent, neglected, defective or delinquent children. The chairman said of them:

The monographs in this volume have been prepared at the request of this committee. The writers are well known, and their ability to write on the several subjects treated by them will be conceded, p. vii.

There is no effort in the work to produce a continuous history of child saving in the United States.

♦ * * # *We judge mainly by the greater movements in social history. In the history of child saving in this country, especially since the organization of this National Con ference, there have been certain prominent movements which have had much to do in determining methods in child saving. The object of this volume is to present some of these principal movements, and in a form where they can be, in outline, examined and contrasted, p. v.

The highest interests of the State and the future welfare of the children are deeply involved in the proper treatment of delinquent and dependent children. Being so convinced this committee has undertaken in this volume to call a more extended attention to the subject of child saving than could be given in a brief report in the convention, with the hope that this effort may lead to a more extended examination of different methods, to the end that the best system will become more an exact science than now. Allowing for the unlike conditions in the different States, there must be an ideal system, which, with modifications to suit conditions, will come to be accepted and adopted generally.

In a word, the most significant work for children in the United States during the first twenty years of the Conference, from 1873 to 1893, as seen and interpreted by the Committee on Children in 1893, had been to save fairly distinct classes or groups of dependent, neglected and delinquent children, and the goal in method most clearly held up before the eyes of the Conference was some co-ordinated, uniform system of child saving that could be adopted as a whole by every state.

Contributions of the Nineteenth Century

This statement of the child welfare situation from 1873 to 1893 may well be supplemented by a brief summary of the most important things that had been done for children during the whole Nineteenth Century. In brief these are:

1. The establishment and maintenance of separate institutions for the care of the separate classes or groups of handicapped children found at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century in mixed almshouses and jails, in inadequate homes and in the streets and alleys. For example:

(a) orphan asylums

(b) institutions for the blind

(c) institutions for the deaf

(d) institutions for the crippled

(e) institutions for the low grade feebleminded

(f) institutions for the epileptic

(g) reformatories and industrial schools for delinquents.

2. The substitution of the beginnings of placing-out and boarding-out of dependent, neglected and delinquent children under supervision for the old indenture and apprenticeship of these children without supervision.

3. The beginnings of separate parts of our present juvenile court system in the form of

(a) probation

(b) separation of children from adults in court and under detention.

4. The establishment of societies for the prevention of cruelty to children.

5. The beginnings of compulsory school attendance.

6. The beginnings of child labor legislation.

In other words, the public or social work for children for a large part of the Nineteenth Century was chiefly confined to the separation from the community of class after class of the children who were specially afflicted by some outstanding handicap like homelessness, neglect, blindness, deafness, crippled bodies, imbecile minds, delinquency, etc. It was for these classes of needy children that the chairman of the children's committee in 1893 was seeking an ideal system that could be adopted by the states generally.

It was also these handicapped classes of children that the chairman of the children's committee in 1915, Mr. C. C. Carstens, had in mind when he prepared his masterly report for the Baltimore Conference on A Community Plan in Children's Work. These quotations from his introduction, entitled An Outline of the Task, show the trend of his thought at that time:

The diversity of race, of social interests and of political development, which is almost the most important feature to be noticed when we come to examine the political and social institutions of the United States, have led to a diversity in children's laws and children's institutions that is to the casual student and beginner in social work positively bewildering.

For these many years diversity of method has been the most noticeable factor in children's work in the various states, but long steps have been taken in the development of a national spirit, and our social institutions are beginning to feel an impetus leading them also to consider ways and means that are national in their form and scope if not federal in their scheme of organization.

In the development of children's work in the United States, it is the opinion of many who have been active in one or the other phase of the subject, that the time has come for giving shape to some general plan which shall have gathered together the successful experiences of various states and cities, shall weave them into a harmonious whole and make it possible for those who are working at the development of our various institutions in our newer communities, or who are interested in reshaping the children's institutions of the older States, to see what various forms of service it is necessary for communities to provide for the proper safeguarding of the children's interests.

But while the thought of Mr. Carstens was concerned primarily with the problem of a better co-ordinated system of care for the specially handicapped children whom he mentions farther on in his report, namely, dependent, neglected, defective and delinquent children, his thought was also reaching out toward the whole problem of safeguarding "children's interests" in general. He shows this specifically by adding to the old classes of specially handicapped children already mentioned, further discussion of "infant care" and "medical inspection" in schools, both of which concern not merely some children, but all children.

At the Pittsburgh Conference in 1917 this forward reach of the thought of Mr. Carstens was developed further in his paper on The Development of State Programs for Child Welfare.

Once again it is the same familiar classes of specially handicapped children that the chairman of the children's committee at the Pittsburgh Conference of 1917, Mr. Wilfred S. Reynolds, had in mind when he proposed his suggestive Plan for Co-ordinated Conferences on Child Welfare. But to the four familiar classes of dependent, neglected, delinquent and defective children as units for committees and Conference

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