welfare. This was only one of several social trends directed at improving the welfare of children, among which were child labor regulations, expanded public education, and special services for disabled children. The court was structured on the legal model of British institutions, first the Court of Chancery under which the king acted as parens patriae (or the father of his country) to exercise guardianship over wards of the state, and the presumption in the English common law that children are more innocent than adults. These ideas had been embraced by the child welfare movement which established institutions for juveniles to keep them out of New York and Boston adult jails. In the 1860s and 1870s, separate hearings were held for juveniles in some courts, and agents were often appointed to attend juvenile hearings to protect the interests of the child. However, it was in Chicago where welfare and civic organizations including the Chicago Woman's Club, the Catholic Visitation and Aid Society, the State Board of Charities, and the Chicago Bar Association created the juvenile court after a long period of campaigning. The act passed in 1899 and established a juvenile court in every county with a population of more than 500,000, which at the time applied only to Cook County (Vito and Wilson, 1985: pp. 47-48).
The creation of a special court for juveniles involved a trade-off, on the one hand denying children the due process and adversarial proceedings of adult court and on the other providing informal and confidential hearings and dispositions intended to do what was considered to be "in the best interests of the child." Those who developed the court thought it would be more of a social welfare agency than a court, with the child being helped rather than punished. This philosophy would prevail for nearly seventy years, though there were those who were critical of the approach and others who thought the system itself was abu...