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In discussing the relationship between parents and the institution of the future, I must refer also to the function of the parent association. If we are to achieve some of the goals I have set forth here today, it certainly will be essential for the parent associations to develop more imaginative programs designed to improve institutional care in more tangible ways.

Let us by all means continue our programs of benevolence -- the birthday parties, the wading pools, the bus trips, and even the TV sets, although I would like to question whether in some situations we are not actually adding to the discomfort of the more sensitive of our children when the one and only day room available to them is filled from morning to evening with the blaring noise of the television set.

However, we certainly need to go far beyond this type of benevolence. The parent associations must interpret aggressively to their friends in the community and to the legislators the needed new programs. They must see to it that state departments will initiate significant research programs in the area of management. They will need to fight the tedious and long-range fights for better civil service conditions. They must be ever willing to search actively for new ways in residential care, working closely with the experts in the field. In short, we ourselves must be as ready to adjust to new patterns as we expect the institutions to be to whom we entrust our children. Some few of our groups have already re-adjusted their sights, undertaking projects concerned with some of these long-range goals.

It is on the areas of studies and research that we must concentrate our efforts. Nowhere else in public administration in our country do we have an expenditure year after year of so many hundreds of millions of dollars without even the rudiments of a research program essential for sound and economical planning of these expenditures. Research in problems of management, of residential care, including physical plant and equipment, should be given highest priority. I do not know of a single comprehensive controlled study concerning residential care of the Mentally Retarded.

You may have wondered why I have referred only to public institutions in my comments. Let me emphasize that I see a most significant role for the private institution as a pace-setter for the public facilities. Private institutions can test out new modes of treatment, new building designs, new patterns of staffing. They can demonstrate, and they can afford the freedom of subjugating their entire program to such a project. But let me also underline most strongly that this implies that private institutions need not just be able to compete with public facilities, but instead must be able to command better staff, better housing, better equipment, and generous financing.

But what can we do about it all? At the Mid-Century White House Conference on Children and Youth, Dr. Benjamin Spock was asked this question with regard to the causes for community neglect of children's needs. May I close with his words because they seem to provide the answer for us: "There are two faults. We who know something about children's needs don't speak up with enough conviction when questions of social services, welfare, social security are being considered. We also have failed to carry out controlled studies, investigations, and convincing demonstrations to prove to others that our solutions are worthwhile, even economical."