lem of delinquency, which may be easily traceable to lack of home supervision because the mother works away from home daily to supplement the insufficient wages of the father, it is probably safe to say that the majority of cases referred to private children's agencies are referred for other than economic reasons. Again in family work the clients are usually sure that prompt material relief is all that is needed to solve their difficulties, thus putting upon the visitor the burden of convincing them that their material needs are but symptoms of more fundamental needs. While in children's work, even where the family's desire is for relief in some special form of care for a child or children, they are more apt to recognize the need for a plan not too hastily made and therefore enter with greater co-operation into calm and detailed discussion. Another important consideration is the relationship to the client. The family agency gives unofficial and in that sense voluntary service, which is accepted equally unofficially and voluntarily by the client; therefore constructive work by the family agency depends in the last analysis upon the skill, plus personality, of the individual case-worker, who must make out such a good case for her form of treatment that she will get the co-operation of the family without such props as official pressure, real or imagined. Furthermore the family agency may be considered unrestricted in its services in the sense of being in charge of, not an auxiliary in, practically all its problems. The children's agency, though often unrestricted, unofficial, and voluntary, is probably equally often an auxiliary called in by other specialists (whose right to take a hand in its affairs the family has already accepted) to give a specific part of needed treatment. This starts the children's agency from the point of view of the family as at least a semi-official agency whose plans for the children they do not feel entirely free to dispute. Such cases, to quote only a few, are those referred, though not committed, by the juvenile court, by the school authorities because of difficulties for which the school holds the home responsible, or by the doctor or hospital social service department in the case of the delicate or convalescent child. This more or less official backing can be a valuable asset but it is at times inimical to good case-work in that it may be overworked as a prop and so militate against initiative-it may be a very real barrier to a natural relationship between client and worker. And it may and often does obviate the challenge to originality and spontaneity which is an ever present driving force in family work and which brings incalculable compensations in the form of personal achievements. Perhaps the most vital difference in the possibilities of treatment lies in the children's worker's everyday use of the "control of environment," which perforce can be used by the family worker but seldom and this is probably half the battle in most cases. Compare this with the family worker's job of taking people and environments as she finds them, and painstakingly striving to bring about needed changes and adjustments in both, contending at every turn with the old established order of things. There is the same definite rounding up of the situation but rarely so drastic a start in a new direction, at least none at all comparable in its effect on the family. In some respects it would be wonderful if at a given point in treatment the whole family and the home could be thoroughly overhauled, outfitted, and put in order, so to speak, for a fresh start, but right here we come to one of the family visitor's most important considerations which not even change of environment would affect, namely, the necessity for bearing in mind, in all cases involving the giving of relief, the essential difference in the social status of the family as compared with the child. The normal social status of the child is one of dependency. The normal social status of the family, on the contrary, is one of self-support and independence. Any assumption of this function of support by an outsider tends to weaken and break down the basic principle of self-support and family responsibility and by so doing to endanger the very life of the family as an institution. For these reasons relief in the form of support of a child, particularly if detached from his family, is a tool which can be used fairly freely, as treatment demands, while relief in the maintenance of a home and family must always be given with a view to its possible psychological effect on family, relatives, friends, neighbors to the limit of the family's social contacts. There are therefore sound case-work principles behind the family agency's failure to provide for the Jones family according to the standards of their neighbors the Smiths, when it is commonly known that Smith supports his family comfortably by sticking everlastingly to a strenuous job while Jones works only when so inclined. It is her abiding faith in those same case-work principles which keeps the family visitor's enthusiasm for her work alive. Economic conditions in the children's field are much less wearing. This difference in economic conditions is probably responsible for the fact that the question of adequacy of relief is often a tender spot in the relationship between family and children's workers co-operating on a given case. Admittedly the children's group has far outstripped the family group in individualization of clients. One might almost say that it is the children's group which has demonstrated the possibilities of individualization. The family group is catching up but as a whole is still far behind. Some indication of just how far behind we are is to be found in the fact that though the physical condition of clients has been a much emphasized point in recent years there are today workers, not new visitors, but district secretaries in family agencies of the highest standing, who are strongly opposed to the theory of a medical examination for every client or even for every child coming under their care. However, there are those in the family field who are in the forefront on this question of medical examinations. Some organizations have established clinics of their own and attempt to have all clients, children and adults, examined as a routine matter. Others have made connections with existing medical agencies for routine examinations of their children. And that even the difficulties of case-load and limited clinic facilities are not insurmountable, when the will to accomplish is there, has been demonstrated by one of the district offices of the New York Charity Organization Society. Two years ago the district organized a child hygiene committee composed entirely of volunteers. The committee set for its first goal, on a preventive program, the physical and mental examination of all supposedly normal children under the supervision of the district and the following up of recommendations made. With only one clinic available for so-called well children they have almost reached their goal and will very soon be able to attend to the new cases as they come. In communities where the relationship between family and children's a very close one the standards of child care in the family agency are apt t than where there is no close contact with a group specializing in child care. But after all, are not family and children's workers bound to be poles their accomplishments with the individual, if not in standards-as long as ther so vast a difference in the case-load carried? At this point someone will surely say that the different conditions of work the case-load in itself an impossible basis for comparison. Granting this, a very study shows that a comparison of the volume of work involved is not so impossit some of us think. sources r The fa In the matter of investigation, as previously stated, methods and identical. Here the chief difference to be considered is territory covered. worker's territory in large cities is usually, though not always, a small congested trict, but her investigation is no more confined to her district than is the investigati of the children's worker, whose territory is so much more shattered. On the treatment side of the question the difference in territory covered is m greater, but there are other considerations which serve to minimize the difference to: remarkable degree. Take for instance the already much discussed health work involved in treatme The children's visitor does advise and direct the families of the children under supe vision to some extent, but I venture to say that intensive personal supervision is ± exception, not the rule. The truth is that, in health matters, the children's visit with her clients all a long distance from her headquarters, has no problem at all comparison with the family visitor whose clients may be within half an hour's walk o her office. But, someone says, health work is only one phase of our work! What about the others-visiting the homes and interviewing key people for instance? There agai comparison is not impossible. The children's worker may have to spend hours i · travel to reach the foster home, the school, or other contacts of a particular child, bu how often does she visit them in person? Isn't it the exceptional child who is visited once a week and isn't an average of once a month frequent visiting in children's work Furthermore, there may be two or more of her fifty children in the same foster home Almost surely there will be several in the same community. So that the time spent ir travel to a given place can rarely be charged to the supervision of only one child. Incidentally the opportunity for perspective in the midst of the day's work which this necessary travel affords is an invaluable one. Add to this the fact that if foster-home care for young children is what it should be, the day to day problems of supervision are met by the governing elements in the foster home. The visitor is in effect a guide and director; the power behind the throne. In other words much of the work in supervising placed-out children is executive. With older and serious problem-children the personal relationship is a closer one, and demands more of the visitor's time, but this takes us into another field where the case-load is likely to be under thirty-five. The same degree of success in family work as in children's work is impossible, under present conditions. Nor will it ever be possible unless there is a shifting of emphasis in family work from quantity to quality-in other words, limitation of intake -which is the basis of success in the children's field. Through the whole history of the charity organization movement we have maintained that our aim was the organization, not the administration of relief. In the meantime, we have so perfected our technique of case-work that when we are able to apply this technique, our results certainly equal those of the most highly specialized group. Yet we are still in the eyes of the public at large, "a relief agency"--the one agency in the community upon which anyone has a right to call at any time for the immediate care of the destitute. We sometimes talk big about our privilege of refusing cases, but how often do we exercise the privilege on any but recurrent cases on which we have “already exhausted our resources without improving the condition of the clients? And is how long would the giving public uphold us in doing a selective job when, from their point of view, the feeding of the hungry is our chief reason for being? jods & d the As long as this condition exists, all our preaching and advertising of instances of successful case-work will avail us not at all as a means of convincing the public of the value of case-work, by contrast with almsgiving. Nor will it avail us in our struggle for more general intensive case-work in the family field. General intensive case-work and the open door to all comers are simply incompatible. Unless we do have a change of emphasis in the family field, we must continue to train our workers in the theory of individualization, and at the same time, oblige them to ignore the theory in the bulk of their practice. We must also continue to serve, as we do now, more as a training field for social work in general, including the children's field, dr than as a field for permanent service, to the detriment of our service to our clients. The latter statement is a deprecation of the inordinate staff turn-over now common in family work, not a contradiction of the earlier argument in favor of reciprocal experience in family and children's work. As stated then, nothing makes for a better relationship between the two groups than a working knowledge of each other's technique. Indeed my feeling on that point can best be expressed in the words of a high-grade efficiency expert of my acquaintance: "To develop toleration and understanding in a given situation give the man who is loudest in criticism of the other man's methods a chance to see what he can do on the same job." MINIMUM STANDARDS OF TRAINING FOR THE MINIMUM EDUCATIONAL REQUIREMENTS WHICH Katherine Hardwick, Director of Field Service, Northeastern Division, "Beginning family case work"-in truth, such a phrase describes every one of us now engaged in family work. We are all so young, the technique, if such it may be called, is so new that no one of us can be said to be more than beginning. However, my sailing orders from the committee in charge bid me consider the equipment the individual should have "before she enters the profession as worker"-what, I suppose, in the old days, most of us called "taking a job with the family welfare." Because of its youth, case work demands leadership.—Now it seems to me that the obvious statement that all case workers are but beginners has this bearing on the subject in hand, that all new case workers must be trained for leadership since on our gend ation rests the blazing of trails, since the very definition of case work and the tion or expansion of its field is conditioned by our ability to make case work cally sound and of practical value to society. At the outset then, let us establish this standard for the beginner under dis that we expect of her not, perhaps, great genius or inspired and prophetic leader but leadership in the sense that she shall bear her part in adding to the contribution which case work must make to social progress. What are the processes by which case workers may be trained for leadership?-Certain innate abilities we must demand-a good mind, a strong body, a power of self-expression, imagination, and unselfish devotion. Given these capacities, how can we help the worker acquire skill, what are the processes by which the worker should be trained for leadership, and in what does this "education for authority" consist? In answer, let us inquire further: What at the present moment is the field of family case work? What is its method? What does the future conceivably hold for it? Just what do we ultimately expect of the family case-worker? The field of family case work.-Up to the present moment, I think most case workers would agree that practical considerations have limited the field of family case work to an attempt to strengthen individual family life by increasingly intelligent work with members of a given family group, individuals who at the moment they come to the worker are "abnormal" in the sense that for some reason, which it is the worker's job to discover, they are more than ordinarily out of tune with society. One flinches before the use of the words "normal" and "abnormal" because standards differ and norms vascillate. However, would we not agree that with a few exceptions which prove the rule, the clients of the family case worker are those who are not at that moment living their lives in the manner which the majority of society holds to be "normal"? Would we not also agree that pressure of work forces us to leave our families immediately they are restored to normal living and unfortunately often before that? An abnormal group is necessarily a limited group for study and doubly limited if the necessity for rendering immediate and continuous service absorbs all the worker's energy and thought. But with the development of a technique that lifts the case worker out of an unthinking routine, need family case workers look upon the individual in economic distress as their only client? Is it not fair to assume that the organization of family case work, including as it does the recruiting of citizens for service on boards of directors and in actual participation in case work, touching as it does employers, teachers, doctors, and well-to-do relatives, presents to the case worker another clientèle of exactly as much importance as the so called "abnormal" group? The inclusion of these "normal" groups would give the family case worker of the future a field that is representative of society and therefore an opportunity for comparison which is essential for study. It is to be remembered, however, that no enlarging of the field will solve the practical problem of giving workers time enough to do anything but routine work. Study and reflection are absolutely necessary, if we are to wrest from family case work the lessons that it has for society. Family case-work agencies that wear out workers before they reach the fulfillment of their promise, agencies which give workers little opportunity even to utilize the technique already acquired, are not exactly in a position to consider larger usefulness. It is at once the strength and the weakness of family case work that it demands an absorbing sharing of the lives of others. It means a certain amount of taking babies to hospitals, ordering the family groceries, playing basketball with Willie, and buying Susie's hair ribbons. But such pursuits, necessary and entertaining (and instructive) as they are, are not the end of family case work. Casework agencies must work out an organization which lifts the members of its staff at appropriate intervals out of the pressure of things everlastingly to be done and gives 1 |