In helping offensive and offending children we shall need to retain an impersonal and objective attitude. Like the surgeon who calmly ministers unto a patient suffering from some foul and cancerous growth, the community must preserve a positive and helpful point of view, distinguishing always between the disease and the disease. With the delinquent this means viewing him in the spirit of redemptive love and taking care to reject the sin without rejecting the sinner.

In sharp contrast to the positive point of view which permeates the community as it reaches out to help the polio victim, the blind or partially seeing, the deaf and hard of hearing, and the cerebral palised, the youngster who falls in the delinquent category only gets the back of the community's hand. He is the unwanted one-a social outcast who seldom has a friend in court. Yet, not unlike other handicapped children, he, too, is much in the need of help.

One of the reasons why adults find the delinquent "hard to take" centers around their own frequent involvement in the delinquency drama. They see in the recurring delinquent acts the mirrored reflection of their own adult inadequacies and failings. Seeing this, not always understanding this, the threatened adult is apt to try to erase the reflection by getting rid of the problem the easiest way she knows how. One way is to deny its existence; another way is to place the offending youngsters safely out of sight and out of mind in a State institution.

There is ever present the danger with well-meaning lay groups of the otherextreme as found in the meddlesome sterotype of the "do-gooder" who identifies with the "poor delinquent" and thereby trips over the boobytrap of sentimentalism. The interested and concerned lay worker must avoid maudlin sentiment with the same meticulous care that she sidesteps the retaliatory reaction in striking back at the young offender. Here are the Scylla and the Charybdis that frequently wreck the good intentions and efforts of many child-welfare lay workers.

Get informed.-There is no shortage of opinions about the delinquent and what to do for him, to him, or with him. But we do suffer from a serious shortage of facts on the delinquency story. The clubwoman, to be effective, must base her opinions on the best available data concerning the meaning and implications of delinquency, as well as on the implications of research as to causes and promising practices for prevention and control. Lacking such facts the lay community will run the risk of letting its efforts wash down the drain through the appeal to the usual palliatives such as the curfew, the woodshed, and antiparent legislation. Such approaches may not only be ineffective, they may actually be harmful in that they can lull local groups into a false sense of complacency with the feeling that they have come to grips with the delinquency problem when they have not even touched a surface symptom. There are three kinds of knowledge regarding delinquency that the clubwoman must be aware of if she is to be practical in her approach to the complex and many-sided problem of delinquency.

First, the community, (usually the professional workers) must be informed on the theory (this is not a dirty word, this is a magic and holy word) of delinquent behavior as a form of adjustment in our culture. Facts at this level of knowledge indicate, for example, that delinquency is a symptom, that there is no primacy of causes that will explain why youngsters adopt the delinquency pattern, that there are many varieties of delinquents, and that every delinquent has his own special reasons for his aberrant behavior. Research-oriented theory alone can provide the sensible and economical basis on which to plan action programs. Programs to aid the delinquent which are based solely on "commonsense" can easily lead the community astray. Just as the native jungle dweller sees little "commonsense" in the way Salk vaccine is produced, and in the "silly notion" that three injections can control a dread and crippling disease, some of the approaches to delinquency prevention and control may also apear farfetched and unreasonable to many native city dwellers. If the practices are research-tested in the behavioral sciences, only then can they bear the seal of approval for community use.

This does not mean that the active clubwoman must turn professional; it does imply, however, that the interested and concerned lay worker should be sensitive to the need of, and dependency on, research-oriented theory as the only practical approach to community planning and action.

Second, the clubwoman and the professional workers must get the facts on delinquency for their own community. How much and what type of delinquency is prevalent? Where does it occur most frequently? What families are represented in the delinquent population? What is the delinquent's school picture? Answers to such questions will enable the community to know the kind and extent of delinquency with which it must cope. Some communities face more severe and pressing problems than others. Very often each neighborhood has its own unique features and its own special brand of delinquency. Hence, most cities and towns (in the large metropolitan centers this will mean neighborhoods) will need to tailor a delinquency prevention and control program to meet local needs. While much can be learned from the successful experiences and efforts of other counties or municipalities, it is seldom that one city can take over in toto the kind of program that has worked elsewhere. This will mean getting local facts with the cooperation of such agencies and organizations as the schools, churches, probation offices, and juvenile courts. Without adequate data on the local scene, both lay and professional workers will be feeling their way and groping in the dark.

Third, in helping the individual delinquent the community must seek out the facts in each instance using case study techniques. This means providing competently trained personnel for child study and diagnosis. Generally this will include psychologists, social workers, and psychiatrists as found in the classical design of a child guidance clinic. Lacking such special services, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to unlock the meaning of any child's delinquent behavior and to plan a treatment and rehabilitation program. Working to this level of knowledge the clubwoman can help by urging and supporting the procurement of a clinical team whether on the local, county, or regional basis, depending upon need and population density.

The No. 1 problem in the country today is not the delinquency problem as such. Rather it is public apathy, misunderstanding, and ignorance concerning the meaning of such maladjustive behavior and the community practices that really offer the best promise of help in prevention and control. Until we have a more informed citizenry, professional efforts to help the delinquent will be stalled and handicapped for lack of moral and financial support. Here is the great opportunity for an informed and highly motivated women's club membership.

Place the accent on prevention.-There are two approaches to prevention : One centers around the overall improvement of experiences provided by the home, school, church, and neighborhood; the other involves prevention through early and systematic identification of those youngsters who appear prone, vulnerable, or susceptible to the development of the delinquent pattern of behavior. The bedrock approach, then, is to work for better homes, for better churches, for better police, and for better juvenile courts. At the same time a concerted effort must be made to utilize the results of research which indicate the telltale signs of potential delinquency. By noting certain factors within the personal makeup of the delinquent and factors within the home, school, and neighborhood, it is possible today to spot many of the future delinquents.

Any community approach that merely treats delinquents after police and court contact, will hardly do more than hold its own in extinguishing fires. What is needed is the preventive effort safeguarding against a possible conflagration.

Work for coordination.-Delinquency is everyone's business; everyone must get in the act. Without careful coordination among juvenile court, police, schools, church, recreation, child guidance clinic, group work agencies, hospitals, and family-serving agencies the community may become a setting for an oldfashioned Mack Sennett comedy. Failure to coordinate may mean duplication of effort, serious gaps in essential services, and sibling agency rivalry for clientele and volunteer leadership.

Coordination of community services will be forthcoming only as a consequence of overall planning and study. This will call for the organization of a community group such as a Council of Social Agencies, a Youth Council, or Coordinating Council. Always such a coordinating community group should have lay, professional, and youth participation in its membership. Again here is where the informed clubwoman can play an important role.

Involve youth themselves.--Any community approach to delinquency prevention and control will enjoy little success if it does not stimulate general youth par

ticipation. For too long communities have been trying to solve the delinquency problem by doing case studies on youth, to youth, or for youth. In the preventive effort adults have been planning and providing school, recreation, and welfare programs for children and youth. Youth services have come to mean adults serving youth. The time has come to involve youth in their own cure. No one can solve the youth problem for youth. Only youth can do this for themselves. In a sense youth must bootstrap themselves to a better adjustment. This means that the adults in the community will need to show more trust and belief in youth. They will need to extend more responsibilities to youth for their own actions. This means that youth must be allowed to make mistakes under supervision and to work out their errors in their own way.

A major portion of the delinquency tragedy has its beginning in the strong feeling of adolescent inferiority which adults preserve in the image they maintain of youth. Yet young people are more ready for adult responsibilities than adults are ready to allow. Youth must be consulted and involved in any community program that aims to prevent and control delinquency. Here is the missing ingredient in the usual adult approaches to what is a serious youth problem which youth alone can solve.

SUMMARY

The modern clubwoman can play a vital role in community effort to prevent and control the steep and steady increase in juvenile delinquency. But this role cannot be played at random or without preparation and planning. It will call for a daringness and a willingness to face unpleasant facts; it will demand an objective and impersonal viewpoint; it will demand that the clubwoman become knowledgeable as to the meaning and causes of delinquent behavior. As this happens, and as the clubwoman begins to place the accent on preventive effort and as she begins to seek a high degree of coordination of community effort and as she begins to involve youth in the solution of what is their own problem-only then can we anticipate a lessening of the delinquency problem. Much of current delinquency can be prevented and controlled. But this will not come about without the sustained effort of organized and informed motherhood as found in the women's clubs across the Nation and around the world.