Field Of Public Welfare Research Articles

The Field of Public Welfare

ORGANIZED social work in the United States recently turned the half century. The National Conference of Social Work, originally known as the Conference of Charities and Correction, celebrated its semi-centennial at the meeting held in Washington in 1923. The attendance at the first conference numbered about twenty recruited from four states, whereas at the fifty-third gathering in Cleveland in 1926 there was a registration on a nation-wide basis of 4,080 delegates with representatives from Canada and overseas, and a paid membership on July 1 of the same year numbering 3,904.1 The first Charity Organization Society was established in Buffalo in 1877. When the fiftieth anniversary of its foundation was commemorated in the fall of 1927 by means of a conference on family life of today, there were listed in the current directory of family social work societies no less than three hundred and twentyfour agencies throughout the United States which were following in the footsteps of this venture.2 The first probation officer was appointed under authorization of a statute passed by the General Court (legislature) of Massachusetts in 1878. At the time of the fiftieth centennial in Boston, all of the states except one had juvenile probation and thirty-six had extended the system into the adult field, with the sole probation officer of fifty years ago multiplied until paid officers throughout the United States now number 3,191.3 Rapid expansion differing only in degree may be noted if we consider social settlements, agencies engaged in child welfare, and those formed to promote recreation and leisure time activities. The juvenile court and medical and psychiatric social work are of comparatively recent origin when measured by the older social movements begun shortly after the Civil War. Their spread has, nevertheless, been even more rapid than has the growth of some of the older forms. The first Juvenile Court was established in Chicago in 1899. Accenting child study as this court did, it naturally followed that there should have been established in conjunction with it a Psychopathic Institute, the first of its kind, designed to be rapidly followed by others promoting constantly widening horizons in the study of children. It was eminently fitting that the twenty-fifth anniversary of the foundation of the first Juvenile Court should have been commemorated jointly with the fifteenth anniversary of the first Psychopathic Institute.4 Other children's courts which organized clinics for child study during the next decade, privately or publicly financed, included Boston, Detroit, New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Westchester County. A notable group of child

Types of Farmers' Attitudes

A problem in research which illustrates the needs of the combined efforts of specialists in the several fields of social science and social work is that of the whole field of public welfare as a technical part of democracy's efforts towards social guidance. Involved in this field especially are the efforts of the professors of political science, of the practical students of government, of the specialist in governmental research, of the sociologist, of the social psychologist, and of the social worker. Here is a task of integrating political and social theory with practical government and social work. This problem is discussed briefly in the search after values in this issue of SOCIAL FORCES, and it might well be considered also as a field to which well prepared dissertations for graduate degrees in the universities might contribute. A similar field for research which offers a more or less new approach is that of adult education and community organization correlated in some such way as the American Association for Adult Education is planning to consider at its first annual meeting from May I5-I9 at Cleveland. Such problems, of course, include primarily the whole field of adult population from the university alumnus to the foreign born and illiterates. SOCIAL FORCES has studied this problem in previous issues from the viewpoint of attempting to bridge the distance between scholar and technician on the one hand and the lay population on the other.-EDITORS.

Positions for Trained Social Workers in the Field of Public Welfare

the growing demand for trained workers in the field of public welfare may be gained from the study of the growth and development of modern cities. From the simple beginnings of executive, legislative, street, safety and a few other municipal services, with everywhere else private and voluntary efforts sufficing, our modern city has come to need scores of other activities and workers. Of these added

Professional Training for Public Welfare

the recent development of public welfare is the increasing insistence upon proper training of those appointed to positions of responsibility in this field. There has always been a tendency in American government to look upon political appointments as a legitimate reward for party loyalty, a custom that is likely to lead to governmental inefficiency when the government enters a field where technical skill is required. In fact it is recognition of this danger that has caused many people to regard with grave apprehension the enlargement of governmental activities. Especially does this hold true in the field of public welfare. The supporters and leaders of private social agencies, recognizing the value of trained service and having before them the all too frequent examples of incompetency in such matters as the administration of

Summary of the Present State Systems for the Organization and Administration of Public Welfare

IN attempting to present a summary of the state systems in the field of public welfare, the question asked by Lord Haldane's great Committee on the Machinery of Government suggests itself: On what principle should the functions of departments be determined and allocated? The reply of the committee is that there are two principles between which at any one time choice must be made, namely: Distribution according to persons or classes; and distribution according to service to be performed. The opinion of the committee is positive to the effect that the second of these two is the ultimately sound principle.2 The most superficial examination of the organization in the various states in the field of public welfare shows the need of asking the same question, the lack of any agreement on this subject and a consequent chaotic variety of experiments in which attempts are made to apply one or the other principle without conscious appreciation of the issues at stake. There are, in fact, few points on which there is anything like universal agreement among the states except perhaps on the point that the field of service is one to be recognized as a branch of the state organization, and even on that point three states