CHILDREN’S COURTS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20450, 3 July 1928, Page 10

CHILDREN’S COURTS.

A PATERNAL INSTITUTION. SUPERVISION OF THE WAYWARD. (Special to Daily Times.) WELLINGTON, July 2. The value of the children’s courts was emphasised by Mr J. Beck when discussing the work of the child welfare branch of the Education Department. * “ The establishment of these courts,” he said, “ marks a new era in legal justice for the child—an era that recognises that the child is not responsible to the State for its misdemeanours or for its destitution, but that the State is responsible for the child. If the case is one of delinquency and has been brought to the notice of the police, they, in turn, hand it over to a child welfare officer for investigation. Here the most difficult and delicate task of the welfare officer _ commences. He or she sets out to investigate, not the crime but the little criminal. Their task is not by corroborative evidence to establish the fact that the child committed a crime and to see that he receives punishment in proportion to the offence. It is to discover what were the factors which led this special child to commit any offence and to suggest a course of action that will, if possible, check the growth of the antisocial tendency at its very roots. The home circumstances are looked into, the parents are interviewed, and the record is marked. " An attempt is made to understand the young delinquent’s individual psychology and physical disabilities as well as the nature of the environment. Primed with this information, which is sometimes very difficult to obtain, the welfare officer writes her report and gives evidence for the child in court. It is largely on the evidence of the child welfare officer that the magistrate bases his decision. Sometimes the case is one of mere naughtiness, the result of lax discipline in the home, and the parents are only too willing to accept the supervision of the child welfare officer where their own discipline has failed. This supervision is withdrawn by the magistrate when the reports justify it. Again, the charge may be of a serious nature, and the home conditions such that it is impossible to supervise him there to his advantage. In that case the magistrate commits him solely to our care and he is sent to Weraroa or one of the probation homes, according to his age or the nature of .the delinquency. “ Perhaps the case in court is an offence against a child. If a child is neglected, destitute, abandoned, it is the task of the child welfare officers to search out the reason for this, to hunt up his legal guardians and discover why they either cannot or will not carry out their responsibilities. This information they also lay before the magistrate when the case is tried. If it seems possible to bring the conditions of the home more into line with the standard demanded by the Child Welfare Act, the child is supervised in-the home. If the bad conditions are hopelessly unalterable, the law again gives the child wholly into our care and a good foster home is found for it.”