Federal Services for Children under Reorganization

Abstract

The last decade has brought a growing recognition of public responsibility for the general health and security of the population and great expansion of the activities of the federal government in these fields. Because of this, many reasons were advanced for the closer association of the United States Children's Bureau with agencies responsible for health and social security activities of the government and with the educational services that were so closely related to the programs of the Bureau. Finally, on July 16, 1946, the Children's Bureau, minus its child labor functions, was transferred to the Federal Security Agency. For many years, the members of this conference will recall, the Bureau was the only branch of the government giving special consideration to the health of mothers and children and the only federal agency concerned with problems and programs in what is now known as the field of social welfare. Some of you will remember the early history of the Children's Bureau. In 1915 it conducted infant-mortality studies concerned with the social, economic, and health factors in deaths among children under one year of age in ten cities. During these early years it also began its work in the field of social service with studies of mentally deficient children and various phases of child dependency. The juvenile court and mothers' pension movements got under way within the Bureau's first decade, so it was quite logical that it should make field studies nd issue a number of publications dealing with these subjects. For some years after 1915 there was much interest in co-ordinating and improving legislation relating to children, and the Bureau was called upon to furnish information on the content of children's laws and to serve as