100,000 show a 29 percent increase over the 1948 figures compared with the 17 percent for the country as a whole.

During the year a number of significant developments on a national basis occurred in activities relating to juvenile delinquency programs. The United States Senate authorized a Senate Committee to study the extent, character, and causes of juvenile delinquency and the adequacy of the existing provisions of law dealing with delinquents and youthful offenders.

A Special Juvenile Delinquency Project, financed by various foundations and others interested in the problem, was initiated in July 1952. The staff of this Project have cooperated with the Children's Bureau in its juvenile delinquency program. The Project's purpose is to focus public concern on the problems of juvenile delinquency and to stimulate action leading to the improvement of services for delinquent youth.

Early in the year the Project and the Bureau sponsored five meetings with representatives of about 90 national organizations to discuss the problem of juvenile delinquency and ways in which the organizations and their local affiliates might cooperate with the Bureau in a solution. The groups represented health and welfare agencies, educational organizations, and civic groups. One meeting was with representatives of the major national organizations directly concerned with controlling juvenile delinquency or with child welfare. These included the American Public Welfare Association; the Administrative Office of the United States Courts; the Bureau of Prisons, Department of Justice; Child Welfare League of America; International Association of Chiefs of Police; National Association of Training Schools and Juvenile Agencies; National Council of Juvenile Court Judges; National Midcentury Committee for Children and Youth; National Probation and Parole Association; and the Osborne Association. The Bureau of Public Assistance, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the Office of Education also participated.

The Project has worked with the Bureau in formulating a series of guides to practices in the treatment of delinquent children. These include recommended guides or standards for training schools, juvenile courts, police work with juveniles, and the training of personnel for work in the delinquency field. Specialists from many parts of the country have worked together on these guides. The Project also prepared a series of pamphlets on juvenile delinquency and made them available for publication by the Children's Bureau. These were planned particularly for use by national and local organizations and other groups in stimulating action and support for better services.

The National Probation and Parole Association has established an Advisory Council of Judges with a criminal courts section and a ju

venile and domestic relations courts section. This Council will develop standards for these courts, foster a public education program, and work to improve probation and related services. A step toward the development of a single strong membership organization in the training school field occurred with the merger of the National Association of Training Schools and the National Conference of Juvenile Agencies. The Louisiana Department of Public Welfare has made juvenile probation services available on a State-wide basis. The National Probation and Parole Association is studying juvenile delinquency in New Mexico and detention in California. In Texas and Oklahoma the child welfare divisions are assigning staff to the training schools for casework service. The Governor of Puerto Rico appointed a special commission to study juvenile delinquency.

Virtually all agencies serving delinquent children and youth are experiencing a sharply increased workload. The majority of training schools for delinquent youth are serving numbers in excess of normal capacity. Caseloads of probation and aftercare personnel have increased. Police officers require better training in their work with juveniles.

MENTALLY RETARDED CHILDREN

Each year the Bureau receives many requests for help with problems growing out of mental retardation in children. Bureau consultants on group care and training schools have been asked for consultation on the standards and plans for group care in institutions for mentally retarded children and youth. The Bureau's regional staff also have been receiving many requests for information and consultation from a variety of community groups planning for mentally retarded children.

Consultation is also requested on program planning, standards of care, and licensing of facilities for such retarded children. Many institutions, recognizing that custodial care is not sufficient, are reevaluating their programs. Requests for consultation are received as to the best plans for treatment, training, and rehabilitation of children in the institution.

Many State training schools for delinquent youth, institutions for dependent, neglected, and emotionally disturbed children, have problems in planning for mentally retarded children committed to the institutions. They are asking about the possibility of using foster family or special group care for certain of them.

It is estimated that about 1 person per 100 is mentally defective and that about 750,000 children of school age are of very low intelligence. Educators are giving much attention to these children's needs but their problems go beyond schooling. The extension and improvement of health and welfare services for children are greatly needed.

Parents' groups in local communities are becoming more outspoken about what they want for mentally retarded children and are taking leadership in attempts to get better facilities, training, and treatment programs.

Grant-in-aid funds for child welfare services are being used for social services and foster care for mentally retarded children. Some workers paid from funds for child welfare services are giving help to families with mentally retarded children.

Although for some children and some families, institutional placement for the child seems the best solution, the emphasis is on keeping the child in his own family and community. Many more children could develop best at home if the community offered educational opportunities and help to the family and the child through casework and counseling services.

Institutions for the mentally retarded child cannot meet the present demands for institutionalization-particularly for young children and those in families with low or moderate incomes. Frequently all types of services-health, education, social welfare, and training-are inferior.

Welfare federations and community councils have established special committees to study the problem. State and local interagency committees have been established in a number of States. All these developments make mental retardation one of the crucial problems with which the Nation must deal.

CHILDREN IN MIGRANT FAMILIES

Children of migratory agricultural laborers have been the concern of the Children's Bureau for a long time. No group faces greater jeopardy.

The President's Commission and numerous surveys and studies have produced volumes of evidence on their low economic status, poor housing, and lack of educational opportunity, medical care, day care, recreation, etc. Many other children lack these things too but the migrant has the added disadvantage that nobody feels responsible for him. His is an "inter-State" problem.

As the stream of migrants moves each year from south to north following the ripening of the crops, it passes into and through one State after another. No one State feels that it can take the responsibility for the health, welfare, and education of the children. Somehow, States have to work out joint plans for sharing responsibility.

Through the Interdepartmental Committee on Children and Youth, the Bureau is already working closely with other Federal agencies concerned with the problems of migrants. States often call on regional representatives and special consultants in the Bureau for help with the problems of these children.

If efforts to improve the situation for these families are to be effective, not only must the several agencies involved within a community and a State work together, but States must learn to work together cooperatively. Spots where community action has been successful must be studied—and the benefit of this experience brought to other communities and other States.

State and local health and welfare departments, which have the basic organization to do the job, should take responsibility for administering health and welfare services for migrants. Migrants should not be set off from the rest of the population, but should participate in all community services as much as possible.

One of the basic handicaps in providing help for migrants is that the areas through which they move lack local health units or child welfare services or school facilities for the children during the school season. For this reason, States and communities must strengthen local health units, have child welfare workers in key places, and plan for adequate school facilities. Since both the parents and the older children in these families usually work, young children are often left on their own. A few States provide some day care service, but this type of care is sparse indeed.

Research

During 1952, as reported last year, the Bureau analyzed its past research, examined its present activities, and decided that its studies should focus (1) on children whose health and welfare are in jeopardy and (2) on the social, psychological, economic, and health conditions that put children in this position.

Within the broad scope of a projected research program, the Bureau had to decide where to start and what problems to choose for study now and in the near future. The following criteria for selection of subjects were determined upon:

The problem should be one that involves a large number of children or affects a small number seriously.

The problem should be of nationwide importance; findings from the study, even though a local one, should be widely applicable.

The problem should have implications for both health and welfare activities relating to children.

The investigation should call for the kinds of contacts, the access to data, or the coordination of the contributions of various organizations that a Federal agency is in a strategic position to secure.

The investigation should deal with some aspect of the work to which grantsin-aid are made by the Bureau.

The investigation should deal with a question not adequately studied by other organizations, governmental or private.

The Bureau decided to concentrate its research efforts on evaluating how well the child health and welfare programs and activities that are

supported by Federal, State, and local funds achieve their purposes and whether children, parents, and the public generally are well served by them.

Carrying on such evaluative studies is a huge and long-range task, involving many organizations and agencies. With its present small research staff, the Bureau can not undertake large-scale studies of its own, but it can arouse interest in others in this kind of study, promote common planning, coordinate the efforts of widely scattered research workers, and give a certain amount of consultative service. Certain parts of the evaluative job, especially the development of methodology, the Bureau can do.

The following evaluative studies were under way in the Bureau during 1953:

1. A review and analysis of evaluative studies in health, welfare, and other fields, and the preparation of a report on methods of conducting such investigations.

2. A pilot study, conducted in the metropolitan Washington area, to evaluate practices of social agencies with respect to the age at which they place infants for adoption.

3. A study to test several methods for determining a community's need for day care services.

4. An analysis of findings of a "vision-testing study," conducted by the Bureau in cooperation with several other agencies, to determine the relative effectiveness of various methods of screening school children for defective vision.

5. A review and analysis of studies evaluating the results of programs aimed at reducing delinquency.

6. A compilation of available information about the health and welfare of the children of migrant agricultural workers-to serve as a base for further evaluation of what is needed.

During the year, the Bureau collected and analyzed statistics on various health and welfare services for children, and gathered together and presented statistical data about adoptions and juvenile delinquency and various aspects of maternal and childhood mortality. The findings of some of these studies are presented in other sections of this report. Through the Clearinghouse for Research in Child Life, the Bureau also collects and publishes reports of continuing research projects so that investigators may know of other studies in their area of special interest.

The Bureau Works With the States

Because of its responsibility to study and observe and to keep abreast of current knowledge on matters relating to child health and welfare programs, the Bureau brings to State agencies a Nation-wide picture of children's programs and receives from them current information on their own programs.