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Another point that will warrant your attention is the question of coordination of services, including provision for sound long-range planning. Here we meet with historical obstacles. In the days when there was but one sure plan for the retarded -- excepting school attendance -- namely the State institution, governmental responsibility rested on the state level and private, voluntary effort was all but non-existent. Today we face a different picture, a picture that has changed so rapidly that it had to grow without benefit of blueprints and master plans. Therefore, your Commission will need to direct its attention to the question of appropriate division of labor and of responsibility as between the state, the county and the municipality, including the school boards, on the one hand and on the other hand the allocation of responsibility as between public and private, voluntary effort. We hardly can expect to make up in short time for the thoroughgoing neglect of past decades if we leave merely to chance or to the initiative of individual administrators or to the interest of an individual legislator the decision as to who should perform what services. Certainly we must avoid duplication -- but that surely is far too negative a caution. We must see to it that services supplement and complement each other and that on each level we perform those services which best fit there. New Jersey is farther ahead than many other states by having initiated the Bureau of Mental Deficiency in the State Department of Institutions and Agencies but I am sure Mr. Tramburg and Dr. Kott would agree that we are still in the beginning stages of this development on the governmental level.

Since my remarks have been so largely concerned with the future -- let me make one additional general observation: As I indicated earlier, much of what we say today about strengths and weaknesses of existing services is based on impressions and informal observations. It is all too evident, then, that we are in urgent need of systematic research efforts in the field of practice. It would appear fair to say that in some measure and regard, these strengths and weaknesses of our programs reflect a lack of knowledge of what are reasonable expectations as we try to plan for retarded children and youth. The spectacular progress we have made in the past decade may lead us to swing the pendulum too far and to expect too much of vocational training or school programs, thus creating a sense of failure and frustration in our children. Hence the importance of having a systematic evaluation as a built-in part in all programs which will be developed.

I am turning now to your third question; "How can mentally retarded juveniles, delinquent and non-delinquent be most effectively treated within institutional settings?" In answering this question I shall lean on a study I made 19 years ago and subsequently published under the title "The Problem of Institutional Placement for High Grade Mentally Defective Delinquents". (4) It was based on a study of both a state institution for delinquents and one for the mentally deficient. However, while my conclusions then were rather indefinite, at this time I would want to state as my first premise that children and youth who are mentally retarded should be cared for in an institution for the mentally retarded regardless of the nature and extent of any delinquency they may have committed.

Obviously this will call for specialized facilities within such state schools, homes or hospitals but experience would seem to bear out that this cannot reasonably be accomplished by simply drawing a dividing line between delinquent and non-delinquent residents. Rather, our point of departure must be the recognition that any residential facility for the retarded will have to develop a plan providing for different degrees of supervision and custody. Even if an institution for the retarded does not have in its care individuals who have been adjudged delinquent, there will be unruly, disturbing, aggressive individuals who require a restraining, disciplinary regime for their own protection and that of the other residents. Conversely, children and youth may be committed to such a facility on the basis of formal adjudication as delinquents, yet may be in need of protection rather than restraint. In short, it would be my recommendation to have within the residential facility for the retarded, a building plan providing for a variety of structures specifically adapted to disciplinary needs along with other program needs and so distributed on the grounds as to facilitate a fair degree of separation of certain groups from each other. I would submit, however, that few are the states in this nation where such an obviously asymetrical resident-centered plan would get by the State Architect!