_Private and Official Activities._--To-day much of the work of
the relief of destitution and of child-protection is undertaken
by voluntary organisations, founded and administered by private
individuals who are engaged also in other activities. These private
persons work gratuitously, but often discharge their duties better
than professional salaried and permanently appointed officials.
Their work is better individualised, it is less bureaucratic, and
has more heart in it. These advantages are the fruit of good-will
and altruistic feeling. Nevertheless the rôle of voluntary societies
becomes continually less extensive. The tendency of evolution is to
bring into operation more and more the principle of the division of
labour, so that questions needing expert knowledge are dealt with by
professional experts, persons permanently appointed for such work,
paid accordingly, and really in possession of the specialised skill
which is needed. The relief of destitution, and child-protection
are, as is well known, both questions for experts; and it becomes
more and more necessary that their administration should be in
the hands of well-paid professional workers. Lawyers, although
in the domain of child-protection they are laymen merely, play a
decisive part to-day in this domain, as they do in most branches
of administrative activity. They are placed at the head of the
expert administrators, and have, if not the first word, what is
perhaps even worse, the last word, in the majority of technical
questions. It is necessary to enter an energetic protest against this
predominance of lawyers. It is absolutely essential that not only
the salaried professional workers, but also all those who take part
in the work of child-protection in honorary offices or as occasional
voluntary helpers, should receive an appropriate training for their
work. Quite recently has originated the idea of Schools of Public
Welfare--Schools and a Curriculum for Child-Protection. We must
carefully distinguish from such schools for professional workers,
courses of lectures whose purpose merely is to acquaint wider circles
with the aims and methods of child-protection, or to initiate novices
into such work.
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