PROBLEM OF THE CHILD

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 419, 30 July 1928, Page 13

PROBLEM OF THE CHILD

METHODS INFLUENCE OF PSYCHOLOGY Following modern methods of treating child offenders Australia now has a Government psychologist in most States. “Problem” children are examined by the psychologist and a medical man after they have come before the Children’s Courts. Mrs. B. M. Rischbeith, J.P., who is one of the leaders of the Australian delegation to the Women’s Pan Pacific conference at Honolulu, explained something about Australian methods on the Aorangi this mofning. She has been an honorary magistrate to Children’s Courts for 15 years. She first studied in London under Mr. Cecil Chapman, one of the most prominent of children’s magistrates and then went to Birmingham, where the first Children’s Court was established. She has also travelled in America, and watched proceedings there. The modern lines of the Courts tended to make them reformative rather than punitive, she said. ‘T am a great believer in enfranchisement of the people as a protection for the people,” she said. ‘‘One has only to go to Latin countries where women have not votes to find social evils, like the white slave traffic. The big advance in social legislation in Australia is due to enfranchisement of women.” Mrs. Rischbeith, who comes, from West Australia, has been appointed to represent the International Women’s Suffrage Alliance at the conference, in addition to her Australian delegateship.

She was a sympathetic onlooker in the suffragette struggles for votes in London before the war.