WELFARE SERVICES IN A CANADIAN COMMUNITY

Abstract

field of the human helping professions. Social work's concern with application of social science to social work is evident throughout the volume, particularly in the Edward C. Lindenman memorial lectures by Grace L. Coyle's Bridge Between Social Work and the Social Sciences. Jessie Bernard's Neo-Marital Program, and Lawrence K. Frank's Change Through Group Experience. Social work has many causes which can and do inspire dedicated action. But broad social issues are not the number one concern of professionally trained social workers. As Evelyn Burns points out. in a down-to-earth presidential address. social workers tend to concentrate on the intensive treatment of individuals and groups. The field of corrections, the field of public welfare. Social Security, and the other public social services that try to deal with the sociopsychological consequences of poverty have only a small proportion of the profession's fully trained workers. S. J. Roney, director of the Bureau of Public Assistance. who writes about this neglected frontier of the profession, states that there has been no decline of family breakdown in these ever more prosperouls times. The number of divorced women increased eight times as fast as the total number of women in the population from 1900 to 1950. Similarly. there is an increase in the number of recorded illegitimate births. The American welfare state is far more a newspaper term than a reality. JOSEPH W. EATON-