Medford mail tribune., June 12, 1960, Image 39

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Family Weekly J
June 12, 1960
A UST OF CHILDREN'S BUREAU PUBLICATIONS
A Healthy Personality far Your Child 20
Children Living in Their Own Homes .. 20
Htallh Services and
Juvenile Delinquency 20"
Infant Car 15
Prenatal Car H
Your Child from On to Six 20(
Your Child from Six to Twlv 20
Th AdolKnt in Your Family 2S
Th Child Who U Hard el Hearing 2S
Th Child with a Cleft Palate 1W
The Child with Cerebral Paliy 10
The Child with Epilepsy 10c
The Child with Rheumatic Fever 10
Your Well Baby S
The Mentally Retarded Child at Heme 35
When You Adopt a Child 10c
Nutrition and Healthy Growth 20
Protecting Children in Adoption 20c
The PreKhoal Child Who U Blind I Or
The Effectlveneu of
Delinquency Prevention 2S(
Parents and Delinquency 20(
Police Services for Juvenile J5
Your Gifted Child 20
Youth Groups in Conflict 25
You may order these books from the
U. S. Government Printing Office,
Washington, D. C. For a complete list,
torite to Children's Bureau, Department
of Health, Education, and Welfare,
Washington, D. C. The list it free.
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By CURTIS MITCHELL
Among the Children's Bureau
projects are aptitude tests given by
trained psychologists to
discover learning abilities of many
so-called retarded children.
The child, says Lord Byron, is a "rose
with all its sweetest leaves yet folded."
A sanitation worker making his rounds
in New York City emptied a garbage pail.
Out fell a shivering baby boy, only six
hours old. He had been abandoned.
A drunken mother, thinking to punish
her baby daughter for crying, held the
infant's tiny feet over a gas flame until
they were blistered.
Six children of a migrant couple who
followed the California harvest were rea
sonably happy until the crops failed. When
police found the family, all eight were
living in their battered sedan where it had
run out of gas. The two youngest children
were asleep in the trunk, and all were
close to starvation.
Such "roses" as these are more numer
ous than we think. The crippled, the re
tarded, the mentally ill, the rebellious,
how many millions have we bred? And
what are we doing about them? This is
a question for every parent and every
citizen to ask himself.
The answer, fortunately, is that we are
doing quite a lot, thanks to a modest
organization, the Children's Bureau of
the Federal Department of Health, Educa
tion, and Welfare, in Washington, D. C.
Because of the efforts of this bureau,
directed by Mrs. Katherine Brownell
Oettinger, millions of children will know
a better life than they were born to.
A boy or girl born with a clubfoot no
longer needs to hobble through life.
A child who loses an arm or leg can be
fitted with an artificial limb, enabling him
to live a more normal life.
After years of neglect, more than a third
of a million children of migrant workers
- are being reached by mobile medical units.
Mentally retarded children are being
helped by educating their parents to a .
better understanding of their needs.
The Children's Bureau started as the
unlikely dream of Lillian Wald, founder
of New Yolk's Henry Street Settlement.
Early in this century, children died by the
thousands every summer. It was her dar
ing concept that some government agency
should do something about it. "If the
government can concern itself with the
cotton crop," Lillian Wald demanded,
"why can't it have a bureau to look after
our crop of children?"
Theodore Roosevelt encouraged her and
in 1912 Congress established the Bureau,
whose primary mission was the "better
ment of the conditions of children."
The Bureau had a threefold program:
1) get the facts; 2) inform the public;
3) make sure that personal help was avail
able to every needy child.
During five decades the program has
not changed.
How the Bureau Works
Facts flow into the Children's Bureau
from hundreds of observers throughout
the U. S., reflecting all the problems of
children in trouble. How many are born
without fathers, and what becomes of
them? How many "blue" babies are born,
how many saved? How many broken
homes produce disturbed children who re
quire care? How many teen-agers are
haled into juvenile courts, and what hap
pens to them? The Bureau knows, having
obtained the facts by bringing all kinds
of opposing viewpoints to the conference
table. Police chiefs met with college pro
fessors, mothers with social workers,
health officials with playground experts.
The result: one of the most remarkable
series of publications ever issued by a
government.
"Inform the public" has been a basic
Bureau policy from the beginning. Bureau
booklets, available from the Government
(Continued)
PHOTOGRAPH BY HERB FLATOW
family Weekly. June 12, IMS
FamUii Weekly. June 12, 1X0
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