Care of Dependent Children

Abstract

to offer living conditions much more favorable than the old, frequently served only to strengthen the child's passionate desire to be with his own people, though parental neglect, physical hardship, or even cruelty might have been his unhappy lot. In the light of this growing awareness of the child's own attitudes and individual needs, it is recognized that if the period spent in institution or foster home is to benefit the child, it must be related to his whole life experience. Provision for institutional and foster home care are thus seen to be complementary, with one or the other type selected as serving the needs of a particular child, while either must be regarded as supplementary to the efforts made to preserve the child's own family life. As this philosophy is becoming more widely applied, it is found that in many instances placement need not be made, and that the child who must be placed may return home sooner than in the past, if effort has been put forth to rebuild the home life in his absence.