REVISION URGED

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 296, 13 November 1937, Page 6

REVISION URGED

CHILD WELFARE ACT. GREATER PARENTAL CONTROL. Per Press Association. AUCKLAND, Nov. 12. Amendments to the Child "Welfare Act, with a view to compelling greater parental control, were advocated by Mr Wvvern Wilson, S.M., who presided for the last time at a sitting of the Children’s Court. Mr Wilson, who is senior magistrate in Auckland, will begin three months’ retiring leave on Monday. "The Child Welfare Act, under which we have been working, was experimental legislation when it became law in 1925. and has been once amended,” Mr Wilson said, in addressing his associates. “I think you will agree with me.that the time has arrived for further revision of the Act. “We who have been through the work know best the difficulties that have beset the Child Welfare Department, with its various institutions, Juvenile delinquency is, in most instances, attributable to lack of parental control. It is so often the ease that the sins of the parents arc visited on

the children that one is led to admire the provisions of the English Act which enables the Juvenile Court to bind over the parents to exercise proper supervision over their children. “There are other provisions in the English Act which tend to encourage individual responsibility,” Mr Wilson continued. “It is no use putting all the responsibility for errant children on the State. It is far better to compel parents to look after their own children. Nature never intended that anyone but parents should look after children, and any regulations that tend to lessen individual responsibility are apt to be deprecated. We all know, in our experience, that any success we may hnve met with has been very largely due to the fact of good upbringing, the influence of one’s parents, and the influence of a happy homo of one s “This being the last time I shall he presiding in your court, I want to thank you very much for the assistance you have always given me,” Mr Wilson said. “Ours has been difficult work—at times it has been, very difficult and very unpleasant—but somebody lias to give up their time trying to keep erring children on the right path, and you have given up your private time to this very good work. I think you deserve thanks for

ib, and I know how close to your lle “Iff lias 1 been e very close to my heart, too because I know from my own experience in other courts how many criminal careers are started in childhood It is the effect of a bad home influence and sometimes of bad heiedi tary tendencies. This is a plnce where these influences may be guided and tendencies checked, and in that way the Children’s Court is a court of the utmost importance.’ ■ Mr I C Entricitn, on behalf of Mi Wilson’s associates, expressed regret that the court was no longer to have the benefit of his services and mentioned the court’s appreciation of Mr Wilson’s courtesy and consideration.