The Care of the Sick in Almshouses

Abstract

IT is rather shocking just at a time when we are beginning to take pride in the fact that we are extending nursing service to reach all groups-the rich, the middle class, and the poor-to find within the last group -the poor-one whole stratum which nursing scarcely touches at all. These are the indigent old, the aged, infirm, and chronically sick who make up the population of the almshouses of this country. It is not particularly helpful at this point to say that there should be no almshouses, or that the present development of social consciousness is doing away with the classes who once inhabited the almshouses. These institutions are with us and probably will continue to be for some time to come. True, with the development of social service, with mothers' pensions, workmen's compensation, and other forms of out-door relief, the almshouse population has changed and many of those who might have been its inmates under the conditions of former years have instead been able to achieve independence. However, there still remain those, old and broken, who did not in their youth have the help of social service as we now know it, and who, unable to help themselves, must remain a charge on the community for some time to come. As the Woman's Department of the National Civic Federation reports, following a study of the almshouses of four states: