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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 “Oar Interest in Your Car Does Not End With the Sale" CENTRAL MOTOR CO. CENTRAL NEAR BROAD KNOXVILLE, TENN . _______ | Seven Sisters SELF RISING FLOUR J. Allen Smith & Co. Knoxville, Tennessee EAST TENNESSEE NATIONAL BANK KNOXVILLE, TENNESSEE Capital, Surplus and Undivided Profits $2,000,000.00 J. F. G. SPECIAL COFFEE ii The Best Part of the Meal ” KNOXVILLE 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.