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Page 56
The Southern Israelite
Broken Orphanages
(Continued from Page 17)
specialized care is best suited to their
needs. Thus again will those children
for whom nobody seems to care—the
physically and mentally handicapped or
otherwise unattractive—save their present
cost to society in terms of courts, officers,
reformatories and prisons, through train
ing in the type of institutional school
which the late bred Nellis, of \\ hittier,
California, called “The Twenty-four
Hour School."
Why do we persist in keeping normal
children in institutions and abnormal
children in private homes, when a reverse
procedure would save money, make the
children happier and prepare them more
effectively for good citizenship? Nearly
twenty years ago, the White House Con
ference, called by President Roosevelt,
declared that “home life is the highest
product of civilization and children
should not he deprived of it for reasons
of poverty alone.” How often we have
heard that keynote sounded! Ten years
later at the Washington and Regional
Conferences oil Child Welfare, we heard
it emphasized; and again and again at
national and state conferences of charities
have we heard it applauded by the very
persons who go hack to their family wel
fare agencies and continue to place more
children in institutions. If this is not so,
where do the institutions get their
children? Whoever heard of a social
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worker, volunteer or professional, re
sponsible for a child’s admission to an
orphanage, bothering to get it out again?
In all fairness it should be said that the
social worker is not always to blame for
this. -The executive of the family welfare
agency is usually handicapped by insuffi
cient personnel to adequately handle all
the cases that come to his office and the
load and apparent seriousness of the cases
are as effectively handled as limited re
sources permit. Nor is his Board of
Directors responsible for withholding suf
ficient support of the work, for it in turn,
is dependent upon the generosity of the
contributing public which is “driven” to
death by appeals. Community Chests,
incidentally, are facing a serious situation
in this respect. Sooner or later they will
have to scrutinize methods of operation
and bring about a more economical rendi
tion of service such as suggested above
in only one phase of philanthropy. Edu
cation of the public in the way that the
Child Welfare Committee of America is
doing must take place before the un
thinking contributor will demand economy
of resources and effort and the abolition
of waste energy and money.
Parents do not want their children,
however troublesome, stigmatized by being
“sent away” to existing state industrial
schools even though a few of them have
become more constructive in their methods
in recent years. If there existed this
intermediate type of institutional school
to which difficult children could be sent,
where public school work would be sup
plemented by study and treatment of their
weaknesses of character, physique and
mental processes, many would be spared
the harsher types of disciplinary schools
to which they are now sent when their
conduct becomes intolerable. Let us sub
stitute construction for re-construction.
We hear much of the influence of religion
for such cases. Perhaps. But it seems
to me that while effective for those who
because of early religious instruction in
the home can respond to it as now pre
sented to them, there are too many to
whom our priests, rabbis and ministers
have failed in their appeal charging their
failure to parents on whom the church
has lost its influence. Well, if that be
so, let us recognise the fact since we
cannot hope to make parents change their
ways in this regard. If parents will not
save them and the church cannot, let us
make some other effort to conserve our
future citizens, however unpromising
they may be now, to lives of useful en
deavor. “A Home for Every Child,”
indeed, but let us also have a heart for
the child whom nobody wants because he
is in some way unsocial or unattractive,
and prepare him for a home life that is
and should be every child’s God-given
heritage.
The Hebrew Orphans’ Home at At
lanta has been subsidizing children for
the past twenty years in their own homes
scattered through Florida, North .and
South Carolina, Virginia and Georgia.
On January 1st, 1929 there were fifty
children in the Home at Atlanta, and in
January 1930 the General Board adopted
the policy of placing such children who
could not be subsidized in their own homes
as well as those in the institution, in
private boarding homes. By July 1st there
remained only twelve children in the in-
>' Sep-
■ justed
placed,
rovide
ration
trans-
t ut ion
d best
served
'• as a
•i those
-lit to
i'T the
plant
will be
"t the
that oi
■ anling
i ildren.
follows
the\
stitution and it is expected •
tember 1st all those who can
in boarding homes, will have !
It has been deemed necessar
a small home for reception,
for private home care and for
fers, so that the tradition of
care when by study this is d<
for the child’s future, will h.
and no new institution estabh
result of sentimental appeals t
who have not given sufficient
the subject to realize what is hi
child’s development. However
with its capacity for 150 childr n
abandoned and the future poli, .
Hebrew Orphans’ Home will b<
concentration on subsidized and
home care for its eighty-five i
The efficiency of the institution i
the children into their homes and
receive the same medical, dental, educa
tional and recreational supervision they
would have obtained in the institution,
in addition to the individual attention and
care that cannot be expected in mass
treatment.
The proponents of institutional can
persist in comparing the best of its
graduates with the rearing of children
in their own homes, often with results
favorable to institutional care. While
this may at times be true, especially with
the alleged breaking down of family life
in America, the comparison is unfair be
cause these same friends of the institu
tion are careful to preserve their own
family life and bring up their own
children in what they consider the less
efficient method of the two. No grad
uates of an institution, nor any who
favor its use in the rearing of less privi
leged children send their own children to
be brought up in institutions. Hoarding
schools, comparison with which institution
people rationalize' the continuance of
“orphanages,” are after all used by
relatively few and the vast majority <>i
well-to-do parents who can afford to use
them or military schools, persist in their
“selfish” custom of bringing up their own
children in their own homes. \ hat the
institution is passing is beyond doubt and
until the family ceases utterly to be re
garded as the unit of civilization, no one
can consistently desire that the under
privileged children should be deprived of
family life any more than his own
should be.
To declare that some foster homes have
been found unfit and that some placing
agencies have not done their full duty, is
beside the question, else we would say
that democracy is a failure because cor
ruption has been discovered in public life.
Unfortunately, we still have some had in
stitutions for children. The child-placing
agencies, however, have not used them,
nor need they' do so, to demonstrate b>
efficient methods of selection, placement,
adequate supervision and ultimate rehabili
tation (when this is possible) the P re
ferential course in caring for children
who can not be maintained in tin
homes.”
HARRY LURIE, superintend!
the Jewish Social Service Bureau
cago, resigned recently to become
of the Bureau of Jewish Social
in New York. Mr. Lurie is a i
of the faculty of the University
go, and a former member of the
Public Welfare Board.