Early mental disease.

Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Early mental disease. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    Chaptee XXXIX.—the FUNCTION AND SCOPE OF JUVENILE COUKTS. By F. C. SHRUBSALL, M.D.Camb., F.R.C.P. Lond., D.P.H., RECOGNISED I/BCTUBER ON PSTCHOLOGICAL MEDICINE, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON. Education Cases.—Neglected Since the passage into law of the Children Act (8 Edw. VII. c. 67), 1908, special arrangements have been made to avoid contact between children and older offenders wherever this is possible. Section 111 provides that a court of summary jurisdiction when hearing charges against children or young persons unless the child is charged jointly with an adult, or when hearing applications for orders or licences relating to a child or young person at which their attendance is required, shall sit in a different bmlding or room from that in which the ordinary sittings of the court are held or on different days and at different times. When so sitting the court is described as a juvenile court. Only persons directly concerned in the case or reporters may be present, and the police officers who have to attend are not in uniform. Children and others not connected with the court are only allowed to be present while giving evidence or as otherwise may be absolutely essential. Provision is made to prevent children while waiting to be in attendance from coming in contact with adult dehnquents, and special places of detention are provided for such children and young persons who have to be detained while their case is under consideration. In larger areas these are so arranged as to provide separate accommodation for young children of either sex, for elder girls and for elder boys. The aim is partly to avoid risks of con- tamination of children by contact with older offenders, and partly to avoid the glamour that might attach itself to a boy who had appeared in a police-court, which could but render an already difficult problem more complex. Children may be brought before petty sessional or other courts of summary jurisdiction on account of some failure on the part of the parents or guardians to provide efficient education or proper care and control, or because of some delinquency on their own part which would equally be punishable were they of fidl age. In the case of education it is the guardian who is summoned, directed to make proper use of the available provision and fined if he fails so to do, but the aim of the proceedings is to seciire the benefit of the child. When care is lacking the aim is to secure either better home conditions or the placing of the child with more suitable guardians or in a residential school of an appropriate character. In the third class of cases the aim is that of the criminal law but modified so as to provide proper training and education rather than punishment. Ideally, the and Delinquent Children. proceedings should be rather of the nature of & hearing of a petition on the part of the child against neglect rather than a trial on account of an offence. At any stage questions of the mental or physical fitness of the child may arise. Education Cases. Under the Education Act it is the duty of the parent of every child between the ages of 5 and 14- to cause that child to receive efficient elementary instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and it is the duty of local education authorities to provide suitable schools for the purpose. Children must attend the schools so provided regularly unless their parents can show that they are receiving efficient instruction in some other manner. Special arrangements are made for the education of blind, deaf, crippled, epileptic, or mentally defective children ; and the fact of a child suffering from such a defect is not of itself deemed to be a reasonable excuse for not causing him to attend school, save that in the case of the defective children, other than the bUnd, attendance at a special school cannot be enforced under the age of 7, and that in the case of the deaf the defect is up to that age a sufficient excuse against all school attendance. This latter proviso is most imfortunate, for it is in the earlier years that the deaf make the most rapid progress in learning to lip-read and to speak intelUgibly. In the larger cities there are day schools for most kinds of defective children, but in rural areas and small towns the numbers are insufficient, and it is often necessary for such children to be sent to residential schools or to be boarded out to attend a day school in some town where such provision is available. No crippled, epileptic, or mentally defective child may be ordered to be sent to a school which is not within reach of his home or to a boarding school without the consent of the parent in writing unless it can be shown to the satisfaction of the court that this consent is unreasonably withheld, and consent shall not be deemed to be unreasonably withheld if withheld with the bona fide intention of benefiting the child. This latter proviso is of considerable importance to medical practitioners since the most effective proof of bona fides that a parent could produce is a medical certificate that a child should remain at home. Those practitioners who con- template giving such certificates should assure themselves that the loss of education is not really