When a family starts to dissolve it frequently comes to the attention of the court or the welfare department and what happens once its members enter the system can be of critical importance. While the number of adults incarcerated is expected to increase slightly, the alarming fact is that if we continue to confine juveniles at the same rate an increase of 70% between 1965 and 1975 can be expected. These data suggest that we should investigate alternatives to detention, not only because of the increasing pressures of space available but, more importantly, because juvenile detention has shown itself to be very expensive and ineffective.

The Community Attention Home, The Dalles, Oregon, provides services to those children, who, due to dependency, delinquent behavior, or family disruption, cannot remain within their present environment. The Home provides short-term shelter care with staff emphasis on proper diagnostic assessment for subsequent placement. Placement of children in the Home provides social service agencies time to plan for further care and/or treatment. The project presents itself in essentially four major areas. They are: a descriptive presentation of data already available at the Home; a determination of what additional data needs to be gathered for further evaluation of the Home’s effectiveness; development of a system for collecting such data as are considered necessary for a further evaluation; and, a description of the statistical methods for the analysis of these data. The information gathered and evaluated as a result of this study will be used by Attention Home staff for both program evaluation and development. This is the third in a series of studies which the Community Attention Home has sponsored for such evaluative and developmental purposes.

Prior to the opening of the Attention Home in August of 1971, a survey was conducted by David Clitheroe and Garrett Long to determine what specific attitudes local groups in the community had about the Attention Home. Their study represented the first part of a two part study. It established the baseline data on the community attitudes toward the Attention Home prior to the opening of the home. These attitudes will be compared with the attitudes after one year’s operation of the home in order to assess what attitudinal changes, if any, have taken place between the first and second surveys.

This study concerns one fifteen year old boy in residential treatment in the State of Oregon. He is a diabetic, has been called emotionally disturbed and for nine years and eight months has been a ward of the Children's Services Division.

National movement and local demands indicated the necessity of training programs for child care workers (herein referred to as CCW's) in Oregon. In 1966, the "First National Survey of Children's Residential Institution" was done by Pappenforst & Kilpatrick. This survey showed that the primary concern of directors of children's institution was the quality of CCW's. A national conference was held in Cleveland in 1967 to study the characteristics essential to excellent performance and make recommendations for training programs of CCW's in residential treatment for children.There have been numerous expressions of the demands for training programs in Oregon by directors of agenciesas well as the Oregon Association of Child Care Workers. (herein referred to as OACCW). The objective of this research was to study residential child care in Oregon as a service delivery system, and to study the manpower element of the system in relation to the development of a feasible training program for CCW's serving now or in the future in various private or public residential child care agencies in Oregon.