BOW YOU CAN HELP PASS THIS BILL WRITE Immediately to Your Own Congressman House Office Bldg., Washington 25, D.C. Ask Him Ask Him Ask Him Ask Him to send you a copy of the B111 (H. R. 3464). if he will introduce the Bill under his own name to indicate his sup- to insert a copy of your letter of support in the Congressional Record. to forward your letter to Representative Elliott, Chairman of the House WRITE to Both the Senators from Your State IF Tell Them of Your Interest and Your Hope for Passage of The B111. Your Senator or Your Representative is a Member of either of the Committees (11sted WRITE A Letter to the Editor of Your Newspaper. Tell Him About This Bill and What Your -Published By THE AMERICAN PARENTS COMMITTEE, INC., 132 Third St. S. E., Washington 3, D.C. (Telephone: LI. 6-4526) "Organization affiliation for identification only. The members serve in a FEBRUARY 1959 Senator CLARK. May I say that my silence does not indicate that I am not sincerely flattered by your endorsement of the bill sponsored by Senator Hill and myself. But, needless to say, if we did not agree with you we would not have introduced it. Mr. HECHT. I agree with virtually everything Senator Javits said. I think the important thing is to get the Federal Government started in a role in controlling juvenile delinquency. Senator CLARK. Thank you very much, Mr. Hecht. We appreciate your coming with us. Miss Fern Colborn? Miss Colborn, we are happy to have you with us, and I am glad you were able to get in under the wire. You represent, I believe, the National Federation of Settlements. STATEMENT OF FERN M. COLBORN, NATIONAL FEDERATION OF SETTLEMENTS AND NEIGHBORHOOD CENTERS, NEW YORK, N.Y. Miss COLBORN. Thank you, sir. Senator CLARK. I know you have a very wide and deep background in this field. Perhaps you will tell us a little bit about that background. Miss COLBORN. I have come here this morning to urge the passage of the juvenile delinquency control projects bill sponsored by yourself and Senator Hill. I am urging this as a means of getting started on this very urgent and important program to do something about combating juvenile delinquency. I have, of course, studied the other bills that are before your committee, and I certainly favor a broad program to combat juvenile delinquency. I feel that the Federal Government should be given major control in this. I recognize it takes some time to get this kind of broad program through, and it is for this reason that I am urging that we get started on the demonstration program now while we continue to develop the kind of broad program needed. In the neighborhoods across the country we have done a great deal by way of demonstrations. In philadelphia through Operation Poplar, sponsored by Friends Neighborhood Guild, there has been a demonstration of a community approach. In many parts of the country-Philadelphia, Cleveland, New York, Minneapolis, St. Paul, and so on-we have done a lot of work on the hard-to-reach-youth program. This has been a good program insofar as it has gone, but we are blocked in that program because we are unable to go ahead and do the kind of broad approach needed in the community, and we are blocked because of funds. Senator CLARK. Miss Colborn, just let me interrupt long enough to do what I have done with the other witnesses and should have done here earlier, which is to ask that your entire statement appear in the record at the beginning of your testimony, and assure you that the members of the committee and staff will read it and then ask continue what you are doing, which is just a hit the highlights as you go along. Miss COLBORN. All right. (The statement referred to follows:) you to STATEMENT OF FERN M. COLBORN, NATIONAL FEDERATION OF SETTLEMENTS AND NEIGHBORHOOD CENTERS, NEW YORK, N.Y. I am Fern M. Colborn of 224 Forest Avenue, Ambler, Pa. I am employed by the National Federation of Settlements and Neighborhood Centers at 226 West 47th Street, New York, N.Y. I first wish to take this opportunity to thank Senator Joseph Clark, chairman of the Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, for inviting me to testify today. Settlements and neighborhood centers throughout the country are very familiar with the problem of juvenile delinquency and have, through the years, carried on numerous demonstrations toward the solution of this very serious problem. We have been limited only through the lack of additional funds in carrying on many more demonstrations than those we have already completed or have in process. We (here I refer to neighborhood house workers) believe firmly in both prevention and treatment. Our experience amply illustrates the validity of these methods. I am here today to particularly urge the passage of S. 694, the juvenile delinquency control projects bill, sponsored by Senators Lister Hill and Joseph S. Clark, I don't need to dwell with this committee on the increasing problems which juvenile delinquency present in our country. You already have had full statistics from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, I'm sure, and are aware of the waste in child and family resources that not only is taking place annually, but unfortunately, is on the increase. It is therefore my feeling that there is real need for speed in enacting legislation to get a much larger start on the solution of this problem than we have been able to do through the limited local, State, and private funds that have been available for this work. I have no quarrel whatever with the more extensive pieces of legislation that are being recommended to this committee through the Hennings, Humphrey, and Javits bills, and I am interested in seeing the development of a broad program in this country to combat this problem. However, speed is of the essence in this problem. The Hill-Clark bill will permit work along demonstration lines to proceed and to be expanded in areas of urgent need, while a broad comprehensive program is being developed. What can be done with a demonstration program such as is envisioned in the Hill-Clark bill, I'm sure is a question that this committee is concerned with. There have been extensive demonstrations carried on in Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, St. Paul, and certain other places through the so-called hard-to-reach youth programs. In all of the cities where this work has been going on, settlements and neighborhood centers have been closely allied with it, and most of the actual demonstration carried on at the neighborhood level has been under the auspices of settlements. This work formed the base of the conference and later the report which was conducted by the juvenile delinquency unit of the Children's Bureau in 1957. However, there is much that we do not know and much we need to learn in programs as old as these particular demonstrations are. As you know, in this program, workers have been assigned to work with gangs, known gangs, gangs which have been in conflict with the law. Yet the people doing this work as well as their supervisors, are constantly concerned about the way in which they lose youth due to the fact that we have not yet learned how to properly work with the police, with the school, with the church, with the home, with other social workers, with management and labor. We need to set up demonstrations that connect youth with these stabilizing forces in the community. More recently there has been some attempt made at a community approach to juvenile delinquency, notably in "Operation Poplar" in Philadelphia, where a program has been carried on in a population group of some 30,000 people. This has been coordinated by the Friends Neighborhood Guild. Three gangs were in existence at the beginning of the project, but have long since disappeared. Instead, the youth of this area and their parents have been tied into constructive community activity, and the area has been turned into one of credit to the community-instead of one of horror. Another outstanding demonstration has been going on with private funds at the Henry Street Settlement in New York City. This is prevention of juvenile delinquency through parent-child relationsips, working with children ages 9 to 11. Here during the past 3 years, Henry Street Settlement has worked with five different groups of children this age and their parents. The results have been outstandingly good. In the case of all five groups there has been a gradual lessening of gang control over the members following the assertion and insinuation of parental authority. Calling parents together at the earliest signs of trouble and helping them to handle the problems of their own children, has brought about marked changes with each of the groups. We know from the hard-to-reach youth program that by and large, the juvenile delinquents who are in gangs are not "joiners" of the constructive activities and groups conducted in the community for children and youth. So at Henry Street Settlement they discovered that the parents of these children likewise are not "joiners" of usual community groups. However, because of problems with their children during these early ages, the parents were willing and ready to work together. This kind of work, however, requires intensive leadership. In the Henry Street Settlement experiment, each group has a leader assigned half-time or 20 hours per week, and one group which has been particularly difficult, has a leader assigned full time. All of the leaders are available both to the child and the family at all times, and are in and out of the home with both regularity and frequency, acting as a kind of friend, helper, and adviser who is needed to help the family through rough spots. As I have already indicated, we consider both the Henry Street Settlement and the "Operation Poplar" demonstration projects as significant and successful. However, we need to have these projects set up on a similar basis and tested in several parts of the country before we know just how successful this work can be on an overall basis. Now I would like to compare costs of delinquency with costs of prevention work. At Henry Street Settlement the cost was salaries of three full-time workers, their supervisor and administration. Neighborhood House in Milwaukee, Wis., has recently done a careful study of costs of delinquency. They report that for the State of Wisconsin, the cost for each individual social disaster-that is training school, reformatory, penitentiary and relief-is $81,040. The average earnings for a lifetime of a typical Milwaukee wage earner for 1958 totaled $117,000. Each wage earner produces in his lifetime, 21⁄2 times his income in goods and services, or a total of $263,250. Therefore, each juvenile delinquent, assuming prevention is not applied, and according to the present pattern of a delinquent becoming an adult delinquent, in and out of training school, reformatory, penitentiary, and so on, costs the State of Wisconsin a total of $461,250. Henry Street Settlement in New York has done a similar set of figures which are a little bit higher than those for the State of Wisconsin. In other words, the Hill-Clark bill is asking Congress to provide annually for positive work to prevent this social loss only an amount equivalent to the present cost of 10 delinquents. My conscience tells me that our request for legislation in this field is much too modest in view of the problem. But I am practical also, and do feel that we must urge Congress to provide the kind of "seed money" which the Hill-Clark bill requests in order to get much further along on our work with this problem than we now have available resources through either private or public funds. I wish also to point up that the Hill-Clark bill calls upon the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare to recommend legislation to Congress based on the findings of this demonstration program. In my opinion this kind of sound working relationship between the Administration and the Congress is essential in the development of the kind of full scale delinquency prevention program needed in this country. Miss COLBORN. In these homes that I mention that we discover in the hard-to-reach youth program, for example, there is a lot we need to know about working with the schools insofar as work with juvenile delinquents is concerned. We need to find out more how to do this than we know at the present time. This is, of course, getting headlines in the New York papers at the moment, but the fact is that there are not many significant projects directed this way over the country. I know people working in the field who would like to try out some demonstrations this way, but thus far they have not been able to get the funds to do it. Senator JAVITS. Mr. Chairman, may I ask the witness a question? I apologize for breaking into her statement. Senator CLARK. Yes, indeed. Senator JAVITS. Miss Colborn, I speak only because I have to go to another hearing. Senator Clark is due there, too, but he is the chairman of this subcommittee and, so, he has to stay here. I wanted to ask you one important question. I am very familiar with the Henry Street Settlement work. A very close friend of mine, Winslow Carlton, is heading it up. Do you favor this bill because you believe the money will be spent essentially for demonstration projects rather than for college or university research in its academic sense? Miss COLBORN. Yes, I do. Senator JAVITS. In other words, do you feel that we have done as much college and academic research for practical purposes as we need to do, or that that is generally available? It does not particularly need the stimulus of the Federal Government whereas getting into the field work is very necessary for Federal Government leadership. Miss COLBORN. I think we need to do more college and academic research than has been done. However, I think we do that best if we do it in relation to the practical day-to-day demonstration. I would not want to see any demonstration carried out that did not have a research angle to it. I think the legislation that I am talking to calls for that. I think this is essential in order to make sure that it is proper demonstration, that it is evaluated as we go along and that the changes are made as we go along and so on. Senator JAVITS. Do you feel that we have discovered a rather new basis for our work in this field? I will tell you why I ask that question so you will be better able to answer it. I had the honor of developing and serving on the New York State Commission on Youth and Delinquency which was the founder of a new approach to this problem in our State when I was attorney general of the State, and that commission was headed by Tom Watson, Jr. The big point of departure it seemed to me there was that we moved from the theory of the underprivileged area, bad housing and so on, to the area of the broken home and the lack of home values as essentially the great landmark change in this whole field. Do you feel that in order to follow through with that new concept we need demonstration projects as to how the community can substitute in a sense for the parent in these terms? Miss COLBORN. You yourself referred to the Henry Street Settlement where they have done a significant demonstration along this line in working with the predelinquent ages 9 to 11. They have made unusually fine strides there and have had unusual success in working with the parents of these 9 to 11's. In fact, the social workers that are employed on this spend as much time with the parents as they do with the kids. They are in and out of the homes constantly. What we do not know, however, is what would happen if we tried the same thing someplace else in the country, because we have not tried it out. I think this is also true in some of the things that got started under your regime in New York. We need to try them elsewhere in the country. |