Social assistance

“ But in many, perhaps most, of the families whom the social assistant attempts to befriend, there is a call for relief, for financial assistance, for money, food, coal, and clothes. This appeal like most medical appeals is apt to take the form of an emergency. ”

“ The Nation’s social service capacity will benefit if all eligible organizations, including faith-based and other neighborhood organizations, are able to compete on an equal footing for Federal financial assistance used to support social service programs. ”

“ It is within our local communities that the real contribution to the welfare of our citizens is made. Those closest to the problem-the social workers in State and local governments, area agencies, and private and voluntary organizations-are usually the most qualified persons to decide what help is needed and the best way to provide it. ”

“ But whereas in earlier years our social welfare program was taken cynically as synonymous with hopelessness and failure, today it is looked on by a con­siderable segment of our people as the promise of a new life. ”

“ The obligations on the part of the community extend to the provision of employment, mental and physical health care, social security, fair wages, rest and recreation, and a host of other reasonable expectations on the part of the individual members of society. ”

“ Without a single exception, professional social workers speak of the integrated social program as a milestone, a breakthrough, moving relentlessly towards a reorientation of the entire welfare movement in our country. ”

“ Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist.
Such assistance, I am convinced, must not be on a piecemeal basis, as various crises develop. Any assistance that this Government may render in the future should provide a cure rather than a mere palliative. ”

“ To help those least fortunate of all, I am recommending a new public welfare program, stressing services instead of support, rehabilitation instead of relief, and training for useful work instead of prolonged dependency. ”

“ We shall undertake three main types of intervention against poverty: The first is to ensure the delivery of basic social services to the poorest communities and to make sure that every poor family has a decent minimum of health, nutrition, housing and education. ”

“ It may not force us to seek social aid. Yet the lack of a clear idea about where we ought to be working, how we can earn the most money, do the most good, and be happiest—that is a deficiency that none of us is free from. ”

“ All welfare work, in the end, whether it be the salvation of the worker from accidents, the teaching of individual or196 community hygiene, the care of the sick, financial compensation for the injured, the teaching of languages, trades, sciences, or the inculcation of thrift, has for its object the making of better men and women, the giving to the worker born under unfavorable social conditions the opportunity to lift himself above these conditions. And from this both the employer and employed must benefit together. ”

“ Now, there is a place for the Federal Government in matters of social compassion. But our fundamental goals must be to reduce dependency and upgrade the dignity of those who are infirm or disadvantaged. And here a growing economy and support from family and community offer our best chance for a society where compassion is a way of life, where the old and infirm are cared for, the young and, yes, the unborn protected, and the unfortunate looked after and made self-sufficient. ”

“ This means that, in many cases, society must provide pensions, insurance against accident and sickness, legislation to check social abuses, and, above all, proper facilities for education. Here comes in the need of child-labor legislation, of better housing, of industrial insurance, of industrial education, and the like. ”

“ Next comes the care of family expenses in all departments of economy, and in which science and training are also demanded: to this add the enforcement of system and order, hospitalities to relatives, friends, and the homeless, the claims of society as to calls, social gatherings, the sick, the poor, benevolent associations, school and religious duties. ”

“ All these conditions are abnormal, wholly unfavorable to a fair consideration of what will promote welfare. Even if socialistic methods might work fairly well when all were favorably disposed, there is great question whether they would work as well as present social methods, under equal good will. ”

“ My approach to welfare reform should not only open the doors of opportunity for our citizens who are on public assistance but also prepare them to walk proudly and competently through those doors. Our goal is to build a system of welfare that will encourage self-respect, build strength of character, and develop to the fullest each individual's potential for a productive, meaningful life. ”

“ To-day, this program can be carried out more easily than ever before in human history. The social conscience is already awakening and in his efforts to win more support for his righteous cause, the worker will derive aid from the churches as well as from the many organizations that have come into existence during the past decade solely to cast their influence in behalf of social-welfare movements. The social question to-day includes the industrial question. ”

“ Services include social security, family and child welfare, medical social work, group and community work, services for young people, services for the elderly, rehabilitation services for the disabled, and services for offenders. ”

“ We will continue to help those who cannot help themselves. We will offer people on welfare a new social contract. We'll invest in education and job training, and provide the child care and health care they need to go to work and achieve long-term self- sufficiency. We will give them the help they need to make the transition from welfare to work, and require people who can work to go to work within two years in available jobs either in the private sector or in community service to meet unmet needs. ”

“ In recent years governments, municipal and other authorities, industrial corporations and voluntary associations of all kinds have been compelled to make ever-extending provisions for industrial protection, social insurance, public health service, housing improvement, recreation and various other forms of organized social effort. All these activities have created the sphere of a new profession, that of the trained social worker. ”

“ Guardians want those who will consider the poor; men who will visit the workhouse to rouse those too idle or too depressed to work, and to find help for those who by sickness or ill-chance have lost their footing in the rush for living. They want those who, knowing what wages can do and cannot do, will serve on relief committees, will see the poor in their distress, and, giving or not giving, will try to make them understand that care does not cease. ”

“ While the ever mounting taxes are hardest on the large middle class, they are needed to finance the comprehensive but still expanding social welfare system. Already one of the most pervasive and generous in the world, and social policy of the government ranges over a broad field, including social insurance, comprehensive health care programs, family and child welfare, public relief, and labor placement and protection. ”

“ To this basic reorientation, there was complementary success in the establishment of modern and improved facilities for the program; the recruit­ment and training of skilled manpower for social work; and the participation of local governments in welfare projects, In this manner, the government was able to intensify its welfare services and reached a new group of people whose con­tinued existence without the benefit of these social services threaten the peace and security of our society. ”

“ The Social Welfare Administration has performed excellently during the past three years in spite of fund limitations that affect all government offices and in spite of the ever growing demands for its services. ”

“ In my State of the Union Address, I directed our administration to study the welfare system with a keen eye to making reforms. We already have in place a low-income assistance working group, which is hard at its task. ”

“ They are proceeding to feed school children, to segregate and protect the feeble-minded, to insure the unemployed, to give State pensions to the aged, and they are even asked to guarantee work for all. ”

“ For not only will the total amounts necessary for individual families be carefully considered and worked out by joint committees but the relief may be gathered from a number of sources, from relatives, friends, employers, societies and charitably disposed individuals. The society has no relief fund of its own but its function is to organize relief. ”

“ With these considerations in mind, the Administration will present its recommendations for further expansion of coverage and other steps which can be taken wisely at this time.
Other needs in the area of social welfare include increased child welfare services, extension of the program of aid to dependent children, intensified attack on juvenile delinquency, and special attention to the problems of mentally retarded children. The training of more skilled workers for these fields and the quest for new knowledge through research in social welfare are essential. ”

“ Those who receive Government assistance have certain responsibilities: the responsibility to seek work or get education and training that will help them get a job, and the responsibility to get their lives in order. That means establishing lifestyles that will enable them to fulfill their potential, not destroy it.
We have responsibilities, too. We must structure our welfare programs so that they reverse policies which lock in a lifestyle of dependency and subtly destroy self-esteem. We must encourage family formation and family stability. ”

“ If there were problems involving poverty on the part of the parents, other societies concerning themselves particularly with the problems of financial relief were asked to aid, in order that indirectly the help given to the parents might make itself felt in the better condition of the child. Sometimes free legal advice was obtained from the legal aid society formed for the purpose of giving such advice to those who were unable to pay for it. ”

“ A social welfare service shall be established under the direction of the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, organising it by means of the relevant legislation, and providing the necessary reserves through funds determined by law. ”

“ Private outdoor relief often leads to indiscriminate almsgiving, thus lending encouragement to wastefulness and imposture. People who are too lazy to earn an honest living apply to various organizations for help and sometimes obtain it from several of them. |The organization of relief agencies.| To eliminate this overlapping central bodies known as Charity Organization Societies, or Associated Charities, or Family Welfare Societies have been formed in many of the larger American communities. ”

“ Social workers of every kind began the detailed analysis of the causes of specific cases of poverty and arrived at the conclusion that elaborate programs of "social legislation" were necessary to the elimination of a vast mass of undeserved poverty. ”

“ Second, we must now devote greater emphasis and resources to the satisfaction of social needs and the promotion of individual welfare. With the new stability and growth of our economy, we can now extend the horizons of our concerns from the provision of the basic necessities of life toward the broadening of social opportunities for every man, woman and child in this country. ”

“ Social Services.—Through the Social Welfare Administration, the Government has extended material aid to over half a million people. Homeless men and women were resettled from squatter areas. Victims of typhoons, fires, floods, and other public calamities received immediate relief and aid. Self-help projects were developed all over the country. Institutional care was provided for orphans, the aged, and the infirm. ”

“ Today I challenge every State to take the money they save from lowering their caseloads and use it—for child care, for transportation, to subsidize the training and wage help that people need to move from welfare to work. ”

“ It is corrective, for example, the finding of employment for a friendless man, or the medical treatment of a sick man, is remedial work.
A still higher form of social work is preventive. Hand in hand with the giving of work to friendless men, and the curing of sick men, for example, we must undertake measures which will prevent a recurrence of unemployment on the one hand, and illness on the other. Preventive work is often indirect, but ultimately it is the most important type of social work. ”

“ At home the party has supported social welfare and insurance programs as a means of raising the living standards of lower income groups, and programs for increasing the income of the rural population to attract its support. ”

“ Great care should be taken, in relieving their distress, not to throw them into the great class of vagrant and homeless poor, to which belong many of the inmates of our public establishments, when they go forth from an almshouse, a hospital, an insane asylum, or a prison, into the general community. Let us, then, adopt as the starting-point of our system of public charities what the French call secours a domicile, and what we have termed " family " or " household aid." Let it be as by the great law of nature it must be the initial point of public charity. ”

“ There shall be created and organized a general establishment of public relief in order to bring up abandoned children, relieve infirm paupers, and provide work for the able-bodied poor who may not have been able to obtain it for themselves. ”