COUNCIL OF WOMEN.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21244, 27 January 1931, Page 15

COUNCIL OF WOMEN.

i THE INTERNATIONAL BODY. QUINQUENNIAL CONFERENCE. VISITS, TO INSTITUTIONS. No. XIII. The Dominion delegates visited a model pedagogic institution for children situated high up in the hills surrounding Vienna. The building was formerly the country palace of the Archduke Leopold Salvator, who, after the war, sold it to a man who was unable to keep it up, so the Vienna municipality bought both house and grounds. In the entrance hall is anv inscription carved: “Who builds palaces for children breaks down prison walls.” This institution serves the purpose of a clearing house for sub-normal and other children,—children with bad house environments. who are neglected, illegitimate unwanteds, or whose parents are in prison, children who are sent by the school medical authorities for a period of mental or physical supervision. They are not kept in the institution for any length of time, only until Professor Taudler, who is in charge, determines to which other institution they are to go. This institution fulfils a great need in providing shelter at once for any child, and tiding over the usual time which elapses between the discovery of a child in bad surroundings and his removal to a home, after the usual inquiries have been made, the necessary forms filled in, and a suitable vacancy promised. Wherever the child is sent on from this institution, it is kept in touch with until normal. Both, boys and girls from six to 14 years of age are received here, and the child’s future determined on reports obtained from its teacher, a physician, and a social worker, all separate and unknown to the other. A special feature of the institution is the Pedagogical Clinic staffed by psychiatrist with trained assistants, and all sub-normal and abnormal children are kept under the closest supervision until their future is determined. An elaborate workshop is fitted up where each can do hand work according to his or her own inclination. The original fencing school of the palace has been converted into a .gymnasium, with shower baths attached. The chapel and the kinema in the building constitute the only discipline of the home. To be forbidden attendance at the weekly kinema is equivalent to the death penalty. The girls print the programmes for the kinema, —a printing machine is provided,—and the women teachers play the music during the performance. The children are divided up into groups of 25 while in the home, and to each group one lady is attached, in addition,to the men in charge. Each group uses its own separate open-air stairway to provide against the spread of any possible infection. JUVENILE DELINQUENCY. Assistance for Courts.—The New Zealand delegates visited the administration offices attached to the court and saw and heard much of their children’s court work. Attached to the children’s court are 23 social workers, who handle 6000 to 7000 children a year,— poor, neglected, jeopardised and ill-used children. In Austria in 1899 the first juvenile courts were started, following the good results produced on these lines in England and America. In 1907 attention was drawn to the bad conditions prevailing for children, and a congress for child protection was held in Vienna, when the need for public protection was recognised for neglected children. _ The Minister of Justice formulated legislation safeguarding and protecting children, and since 190 S children and juveniles have been treated separately from adults. The year 1919 saw the first laws passed dealing with crime in juveniles. Special emphasis is laid on their juvenile court care work, under which help is extended not only to the child who is brought within the jurisdiction of the court, but to the whole family. They deal with anything in domestic life that affects the child. This is the centre of their general care work, and acts as the liaison between voluntary organisations and the court. It is the source of information for the judge, and provides the personal link between the magistrates and the probation officer. This work began in a very small way in an old house into which no sun penetrated. All the workers became .ill, and were frozen in the winter, so it was decided to drop the work. The authorities, nowevor, intervened, and provided the present up-to-date building, and so the work has grown, on the principle that, if we believe absolutely in children doing good, they will make good; and that a child who has been neglected for 15 or 16 years cannot be changed in a short tune, bat must be pardoned if she commits another offence and forgiven several times, and educated for years. Both during and after the war much crime was committed through hunger, and improved general conditions may account for the diminution of crime in recent years, as well as improved methods in dealing with it. This decrease is partly attributable to_ the undetermined sentence and the conditional sentence in Austrian law. The undetermined sentence pronounces; “You are found to be guilty, but you are not sentenced. We give you another ohan.ee for three or five years.” i In 1928 the conditional sentence came into force—a person sentenced conditionally cannot attain certain positions, but a new law is shortly to be passed allowing these privileges again, after a good probationary period. Juveniles are boys and girls from 14 to 18 years of age. but endeavours are being made to extend the juvenile age to 21 years. For these yomig lads they have a male probation officer who is an experienced worker and the father of a family, who treats the probationers as friends and not as under his control, who invites them to his house, and realises the value of letting them see what a home and a family is like. The probation system is run on the big brother and big sister movement, and the assistance is enlisted of young helpers from the youths movements of the city, who are not probation officers. These young helpers take the young people out on Sundays to the hills and woods, making many excursions with them and inviting them to parties and tp private houses, the boy and girl probationers together. Before every juvenile trial, an elaborate investigation and psychological test are carried out. If necessary, a psychiatiist’s certificate is produced at the trial, and a lengthy questionnaire report is before the judge, which has included ivhat good inclinations and interests are there, not only the bad ones. The judge then decides if the child shall (a) stay with its father and mother; (b) be sent to a borne, or (c) be apprenticed. As far as possible, unemployed boys and girls are sent to peasants in the country who need help, and are kept under personal supervision. Vienna has no female judges, only 'women who act as probation officers.