In the annual assembly at Cleveland, Ohio, in October 1957, a resolution on social welfare was passed urging the churches to "express their social welfare concern locally by joining with State and community agencies in the support of the care and treatment of juvenile delinquents." The entire text of the resolution is included here for the records. SOCIAL WELFARE-RESOLUTION NO. 37. As Christians we believe that personality possesses inestimable value in the sight of God. We therefore seek to redeem men from influences and conditions that harm and destroy personality and work for those things which enrich human life and free men and women for the fullest development of their potentialities as children of God. Among the special responsibilities which these convictions lay upon the churches of our brotherhood is the developing of much more adequate programs of pastoral care for the older members of our congregations and communities. Several agencies of our brotherhood including the National Benevolent Association, and the departments of religious education, church development and evangelism, Christian Women's Fellowship, Christian Men's Fellowship, and the department of social welfare of the United Christian Missionary Society are working together in planning a program designed to serve the needs of older persons in the areas of fellowship, housing, health, spiritual enrichment, and financial counseling. It is to be hoped that they will find local churches more than willing to cooperate in developing programs for serving older adults at the parish level. In addition, churches may and should express their social welfare concern locally by joining with State and community agencies in the support of their programs for: (1) The care and treatment of juvenile delinquents. (2) Assistance to released prison inmates. (3) Guidance for alcoholics. (4) Mental health. (5) Maintaining standards relating to adoption practices. (6) Foster home care for children. (7) The resettlement of immigrants and refugees. (8) Assistance to the handicapped. (9) Assistance to the aged. Christians also have an additional task. It is not enough merely to heal the casualties of our civilization's social malfunctioning. The churches must also recognize their responsibility to eliminate the causes of crime, alcoholism, poverty, and discrimination in society. This will mean participation in political and social action designed to bring about such changes. Churches must learn to exercise their conscience function in society in order to awaken the spirits of their members so that they learn to identify themselves with the pain and loneliness of their less fortunate brethren. While many programs and panaceas have been suggested to meet the juvenile dilemma there seems to be two main facets necessary to coming to grips with the problem: (1) Prevention, (2) therapy and rehabilitation. Constructive leisure time programs and group work activities are concrete examples of efforts carried on in the area of prevention. Many inner city churches such as Central Christian Church, Indianapolis, Ind.; McCarty Memorial Christian Church, Los Angeles; Franklin Circle Christian Church, Cleveland; and National City Christian Church here in Washington are illustrative of such implementation. Also, church-related community centers have come into being as another means of prevention such as Flanner House, Indianapolis: All Peoples Community Center, Los Angeles; Fellowship Center, St. Louis, to mention a few. A second approach toward preventive measures which the Disciples of Christ have inaugurated is to place in the portfolio of a national staff person the responsibility for keeping the churches aware of ways in which they may function in programs of prevention. A third involvement is by way of professional persons of our communion who are trained in social work skills serving child welfare and family service agencies in behalf of youth. Those few persons with psychiatric training share their skills with the public schools, child guidance clinics, and other preventive facilities. Also, our concern lies in the field of therapy and rehabilitation. The consensus of opinion regarding the most urgent needs in this area can be outlined as follows: 8 Insufficient number of trained persons available. (b) The number of emotionally disturbed children far outnumbers the treatment centers with adequate staffs. (c) The cost of treatment in private institutions is prohibitive in all but a minimum number of cases. (d) The lack of trained personnel to assist local agencies barring the need for adequate personnel to assist local agencies barring the need for adequate personnel to act as technical advisers to local churches in the matter of juvenile disturbances. Institutions and agencies at the local level are constantly confronted with the problem of 50 to 100 emotionally disturbed children who have come into contact with the law and have been committed to the youth or juvenile center for analysis and treatment. These institutions may have available the services of a psychiatrist or a psychologist only a few hours per week. To do a thorough job of rehabilitation a treatement center needs a team of four technically trained persons (a psychologist, psychiatrist, psychiatric social worker, and a medical doctor) to each 10 to 15 children over a long period of time, perhaps a year. Emotionally disturbed children may very well become emotionally disturbed parents and emotionally disturbed parents may provide an environment that creates emotionally disturbed children and so goes the vicious circle. Presently a group of concerned Christian citizens in Indianapolis is exploring plans for a pilot project in the field of treatment. This group consists of Judge Harold N. Fields of Marion County Juvenile Court, in an advisory capacity; Paul Partlow, an influential real estate dealer who gives much of his leisure time to assisting juvenile prevention agencies; Miss Lucy Ann Hass, director of community services on the staff of Central Christian Church; Leslie G. Heuston, area director of the National Benevolent Association of the Disciples of Christ, an agency concerned with the problems or orphaned or halforphaned children and the aging. Also in the group are Lewis H. Deer and Mrs. Ruth E. Milner of the Department of Social Welfare of the United Christian Missionary Society. This group has dis covered that the greatest need lies in the area of treatment for the emotionally disturbed, but that any such program is practically impotent because of the almost total absence of qualified personnel to work with the community agencies and/or institutions. In Indiana there are 92 juvenile judges and only 3 private treatment centers, not tax supported, each of which is equipped to handle not more than 50 to 75 children. Marion County alone has at least 40 youngsters annually who are so emotionally disturbed as to be in need of professional institutional therapy. In the estimation of Judge Fields the best institution in Indiana has the consultative services of a trained psychologist for 4 hours per month for 50 disturbed children. It is common knowledge that if and when predelinquent tendencies are discovered in a child he can be submitted for treatment by competently trained persons, his entire personal character and habit patterns can be changed into normal channels of action; also, that if a seriously emotionally disturbed child is given institutional therapy in time he will be cured and can adjust to a normal place in society. We, therefore, wish to testify in behalf of bill H.R. 772 proposed by Congresswoman Green of Oregon which we believe points at the heart of a vital program to provide assistance in strengthening and improving State and local programs for the diminution, control, and treatment of juvenile delinquency. We believe that this bill offers an unequaled opportunity for implementation at the local level. Church and church-related groups who have close contact with young people in the matter of vocational guidance can help in recruitment for the professions necessary to staff adequately public and private institutions in the field of prevention and cure of delinquency. We recognize the needs that exist in local communities and that the potential personnel is to be found there also, but at the same time we are aware that community resources are not adequate to provide the necessary training and facilities to meet those needs. Furthermore, we wish to point out that juvenile delinquency is a national problem which should be approached by National, State, and local forces working cooperatively. This leads us to endorse unequivocally this bill which provides for the establishment within the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare a program for the training of personnel. We feel that projects without trained personnel is an inadequate approach to the problem. In the light of these and the foregoing statements, we urge this committee to give careful and favorable consideration to bill H.R. 772, which so adequately provides the enabling machinery for Federal legislation in the field of juvenile delinquency. Mrs. WYKER. I would like to say, Mr. Chairman, that we would support any bill, as I hope, and I am sure Mrs. Green would, which would provide for the training of personnel because we feel so desperately in need. Mr. ELLIOTT. I want to thank you very much, Mrs. Wyker, for your very fine statement. You represent, as you pointed out, the United Council of Churchwomen of the National Council of Churches of Christ. Mrs. WYKER. No; I think for the record I should change that. I was a former president. I now represent my communion for which I am testifying here. Mr. ELLIOTT. What is your communion? Mrs. WYKER. The Disciples of Christ, the Christian Churches. Mr. ELLIOTT. I now recognize the gentlewoman from Oregon, Mrs. Green. Congresswoman GREEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, may I say how glad I am to have Mrs. Wyker come to give testimony today in favor of legislation in this particular field. I have known of her outstanding work over a period of years and have had the good fortune in this last year to meet her and get to know her a little bit better. On page 4 you said that in Indiana there are only three private treatment centers and no tax-supported centers at all, and previous to that you had said that the cost was prohibitive in the private treatment centers, private institutions. Do you have any idea what the cost is for the care of an emotionally disturbed child in a private institution? Mrs. WYKER. I am sorry, Mrs. Green, I do not have this information. I wish I did. Congresswoman GREEN. With an emotionally disturbed youngster in Indiana the choice would be to send him to a private institution where the cost might be very, very high, or to let the child go and then, when he commits acts against society, to put him in a reform school or industrial school; is that right? Mrs. WYKER. Yes; this is what we consider a problem. Congresswoman GREEN. I notice also in Indianapolis you refer to a project which is being carried on. Do you know what their experience has been in the staffing of the center? Mrs. WYKER. Yes; they are very discouraged. I learned just as I left the office that the man who has been in charge of personnel training is leaving for a job in the East and they have been very disturbed about finding another person to replace him. They feel that the greatest need is for those with training to equip it. We have a lot of good people in the church who are deeply concerned, but to find trained help is our greatest need. Congresswoman GREEN. I have no further questions, Mr. Chairman. Mr. ELLIOTT. Mr. Wainwright? Mr. WAINWRIGHT. No questions. Mr. ELLIOTT. I want to thank you very much, Mrs. Wyker, for your statement, and I am sure that all members of the committee will agree that what you have said will be very helpful to us as we try to arrive at the basic legislature in this field. Thank you very much. Our next witness today is Mrs. John Baley Jones, of the Women's Society of Christian Service of the Methodist Church. Mrs. Jones, we are happy to have you. Do you have a statement? Mrs. JONES. Yes; I do have a statement. STATEMENT OF MRS. JOHN BALEY JONES, WOMEN'S SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN SERVICE OF THE METHODIST CHURCH Mrs. JONES. My name is Mrs. John Baley Jones, of Washington, D.C. I am appearing today on behalf of the Women's Division of Christian Service, which is the duly elected policymaking body for nearly 2 million Methodist women in women's societies and guilds across the Nation. The organization which I represent has as a part of its responsibility a deep concern for children and youth. We have felt for some time that Federal action to supplement and aid in the correlation of community and State programs in the field of remedial and preventive work with children and youth was necessary if a real impact is to be made on a problem of such dimensions. The problem of juvenile delinquency is one which is affected by the complicated changes which are taking place in our Nation as well as in the rest of the world. It is obvious that research is necessary to determine how various factors are affecting the development of the Nation's children. We cannot escape the conclusion that comprehensive plans must be formulated for dealing with the factors responsible for peril to the character of a large group of our children and youth. Yet we are confronted with a paradox. While the problem increases and social change is accelerated, there is an appalling paucity of the resources with which to combat the increase in juvenile delin quency. Concern about the problem is general. The public has become all too accustomed to rising figures on the number of children who are brought to court each year. Headlines about children and youth involved in almost every type of crime from petty misdemeanor to murder have become commonplace. It is obvious that the problem overrides State and community borders, that it is prevalent both in urban and rural areas, and that it calls for specialized facilities and professional personnel far in excess of what can be made available with the resources presently available for work in this field. Since the dimensions of the problem and its manifestations are so clear to anyone who looks at the situation it seems clear that our problem is to survey the possibilities for fruitful work and to make plans to supplement and correlate the efforts already being put into work at the points indicated. 1. Family life and security: It is our conviction that improvement in and conservation of the values of family life hold the key to the grave problems of emotional security in children. No other factor in the life of the child has as great opportunity in his development. Yet in spite of this obvious fact, comparatively little has been done to establish what can be done to strengthen family life. We tend to accept almost as an axiom the fact that conditions of an industrialized society, of employement, our educational methods, our commercialized entertainment, and television are disruptive of family life. We also tend to assume that this deterioration of family life is bad for the children and likely to produce the kind of insecure and warped personalities that will find their way into trouble and eventually, unless they are helped, into tragedy. Yet, we are doing comparatively little toward analysis of these factors and plans for dealing with their effects. Little is being done to strengthen the basic down-to-earth life of the family and to increase its sense of responsibility in a small |