H IDALGO COUNTY'S public welfare agency in < its child welfare work has the distinction of being the first to <i provide homemaker services in Texas. We feel these services answer a vital need in our county. Actually, there are some parts of our homemaker service which we do not like but cannot change immediately because of our financial situation. I want to tell you about some of the weak points as well as the strong; the good and the bad. Imagine yourself in the southernmost city of Texas, Brownsville at the mouth of the Rio Grande. Travel up the river about 75 miles, turn directly north, and go another 20 miles. You will find yourself in Edinburg, the county seat of Hidalgo County. There are about 16,000 people in Edinburg when all the migrant workers have returned from the north, which usually happens in December. There are about 200,000 people in Hidalgo County. It is a large county and much more thickly populated than some counties I know of in Texas. The chamber of commerce would prefer that I tell you only the attractive things about the region, such as the good, tree-ripened citrus fruits, the beautiful palm trees, the many oil and gas wells, the fine cattle, and the warm winter vacationland; but I feel that you should know more than these facts because there are some which influence our child welfare homemaker program. We have a population of 75,000 children, many of them from large families whose parents are poorly paid farm laborers. Wages are from $4 to $5 per day when they work. Because of inadequate diet, lack of medical care, overwork, and poor health standards, incidence of tuberculosis is extremely high. In the South Texas State Tuberculosis Hospital, located in the adjoining county, there were 473 patients on August 31, 1959. Of that number 205, or 43 percent, were from Hidalgo County. There are great social and cultural differences. Seventy percent of the residents are Latin-American, or Spanish-speaking; others are those who have settled there from the colder regions "up north." Our child welfare agency is charged with the responsibility of providing protective services to children who are "dependent" and "neglected," as defined by our State laws. This includes the usual provisions for foster-home boarding care, casework services, and adoptions. Homemaker service came to be a part of our program as a result of an experiment with two family situations. I would like to tell you briefly about these two families before we discuss other features of the work. On a visit to the home of Mr. G in Edinburg, Tex., we might see a family of two girls and three boys getting ready for school. We would be in a small frame house with two bedrooms, a kitchen, and an outdoor toilet. It is a very modest house, but what you would Mr. Justiss is regional service supervisor, State Department of Public Welfare, Hidalgo County Child Welfare Unit, Edinburg, Tex. This paper was delivered at the Round Table Conference on Homemaker Service of the American Public Welfare Association in Washington, D.C., December 4, 1959.