Report of the Juvenile Delinquency Committee

that a Child Welfare Officer be required to report progress to a Magistrate for his personal information and to enable him to check on the correctness of his judgment, there can be no possible objection. When asked for, indeed, this is already done. If, on the other hand, it is proposed that the Magistrate have continuing authority over the child, then it would turn the Court into a social work agency and would run counter to the whole trend in the development of Children's Court and child welfare work from the beginning of this century. The Magistrate would be compelled to take on responsibilities for which he is not trained, and Child Welfare Officers would tend to become merely junior probation officers attached to the Court. One of the advantages of the present system is that the Superintendent, being the final authority, can ensure uniform standards of case work throughout New Zealand. If it were left to each individual Magistrate to decide exactly what should be done with children, it is certain that w