The State's Responsibility for Social Welfare

Abstract

SOCIAL welfare embraces a multitude of subjects. Prisoners' aid, juvenile delinquency and probation work are among its activities. So are certain aspects of psychiatry, and of the care of the insane and the feeble-minded. It is concerned with vocational education, rehabilitation and problems of education. It covers also health conditions, hygiene, social settlements and phases of immigration. The great subjects of poverty, dependency and charity are its special care. The sick, the afflicted and the aged come within its scope. It enters the home and undertakes to meet a variety of family questions there. The idea back of all these things-that those in need from one cause or another must be cared for by their more fortunate or better informed fellows,-is, of course, not new. Agencies to help the destitute date back hundreds of years, and in this country are as old as the colonies. The principal developments that are new are, first, a broadening of this field of usefulness, so that it has come to embrace a much greater variety of activities, and, secondly, special training and equipment for those engaged in social welfare work, culminating in the establishment of professional schools of social service in many of our colleges and universities. The State's responsiblity in this field is not easy to define. We start, of course, with certain recognized and accepted governmental duties. First, there are certain standards which the State prescribes through legislation. These relate to such matters as hours of labor, working conditions, health and sanitary needs, school requirements and the like. Next, the State accepts the obligation to provide custodial care and curative oz reformatory measures for certain classes,these including prisoners, juvenile delinquents, the insane and feeble-minded and generally the destitute. Lastly, certain lines of educational or curative work are recognized or coming to be recognized as State functions, such as clinics of various kinds, visiting nurses, industrial rehabilitation and the like. How far beyond these and analogous functions, and indeed how far within these functions themselves, the State should assume responsibility for social welfare, presents varying views, which range all the way up to those who believe that practically every aspect of social welfare is a governmental function. It may be true that this field of endeavor has developed and broadened so rapidly during recent years that it is a little early to attempt anything very definite as to just what the State is and is not called upon to do. Fundamentally, however, the question