Social service

“ No doubt, too, most of my occupation with myself—in sleep, food, exercise, study—is a necessary preparation for social service. All I am urging is that social service cannot stand alone. It requires a large individualistic background. ”

“ The deepest and truest ethical tendencies of the time emphasize not divisions of sex or creed or party, but the unity of social service. And this is social service not in the moralistic, goody-goody sense, but in the sense of actual social function. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This program for constructive social service in the country is largely based upon the conservation of the moral and spiritual resources of the country. The deepest need of the country can be satisfied by no smaller propaganda. The instruments for such service we already have. The country school, the country church, neighborhood fellowship, and the Young Men's Christian Association provide the means for a moral and spiritual renaissance in the country. ”

“ The development of professional social service, growing out of the charity movement, but now embracing community work of every kind, will probably lessen the evils of the modern neighborhood, and retain its desirable features. ”

“ The Federal Government provides for an extensive and valuable program of constructive social service, in education, home building, protection to women and children, employment, public health, recreation, and many other directions. ”

“ Text-books of sociology which are at once theoretical and practical, aiding alike the citizen who seeks to fulfil intelligently his duty toward the dependent classes and the volunteer or professional worker in any branch of social service, are rare enough ”

“ Read of the Schools of Philanthropy, where modern methods of relief are taught, and the workers are trained for service in some branch; and the American Institute of Social Service, the object of which is the gathering and disseminating of information on all social thought and service. The latter publishes monthly a pamphlet on present day problems which is excellent for reference.
Discuss welfare work, the care of employers for employees; what has been done? the ventilation of work rooms; safe machinery; pensions, insurance, hospital, savings bank, care of sick at home, food, etc. ”

“ The extension of the sense of public responsibility, the realization that reform must come in all the interlocking activities of a highly organized business, political and social life has tempted some people to think that the days of social work are numbered or to seek out for it some highly specialized or recondite function. But if we are right in ascribing to it this function of challenging all forms of service to reach and satisfy individual needs it may be more important in the future than in the past. ”

“ Wholesale and collectivist methods call for constant adaptation of general means to particular cases and the more we give of government [Pg 44] service the more we may need of social work. The more varied our health service, the more flexible and extensible our educational opportunities, the more occasions there will be for adjustment. ”

“ Finally, we propose special attention to the quality and scope of social services to the eleven basic needs of man to ensure that our development will meet the test of social justice and democratization. ”

“ It may be, although I may not be clothed with official responsibility, in my power to render some service to the country in the affairs of which I have administered for the last five years, and show the interest, the lively interest, I shall ever take in the welfare, both moral and social, of its people. ”

“ On the other hand a very small amount of public service freely and cheerfully given by every 89citizen, results in great benefits to the community which receives this service, and to the individuals who give it as well. ”

“ AS soon as public service ceases to be the chief business of the citizens, and they would rather serve with their money than with their persons, the State is not far from its fall. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Such follow-up work as is done by hospitals and by the workmen’s compensation office, the work of the mothers’ assistance fund, of the voluntary experiments in special nutrition classes, vocational guidance, and scholarships for trade school attendance, are only a few examples of the kind of thing social work branches into as established agencies extend their own responsibilities. ”

“ The personal, economic and cultural welfare of the private person shall be fundamental aims of public activity. In particular, it shall be incumbent upon the public institutions to secure the right to work, housing and education, and to promote social care, social security, and a good living environment.
The public institutions shall promote the ideals of democracy as guidelines in all sectors of society. ”

“ Though actively engaged with serious problems of State government, of city administration and of home economics, the association has never overlooked the fact that social activities [Pg 62] are essential to good government and right living and has made its social affairs a noteworthy feature during the past years. ”

“ The extension of a philanthropic interest into new fields, the third result of scientific thoroughness and system has, bewildered us and occasioned most of the inquiry as to what social work may be. Today in the administrative departments of Federal and State governments, in the churches, the courts, the schools, the hospitals there is work being done which has a double allegiance. ”

“ Since, then, the welfare of the body social depends mainly on the relative smallness of Classes D and E, the selfish and the noxious, it follows that an important, if not the chief, duty to society, for all who really and reasoningly desire the well-being and progress of the community, is so to regulate their conduct as to cause these classes to become relatively smaller and smaller. ”

“ The same is true of the large array of people who, in the domestic and ecclesiastical institutions, are teaching the children at home or in the schools and churches ; of the policemen and prison officials who are dealing with anti-social classes ; of the charity workers and pauper overseers who are dealing with the sub-social classes ; these are fitting social material for society, just as the other technical workers are fitting natural material for society's uses. ”

“ Can political independence ever become subordinate to social welfare? Are there any spiritual bonds that can hold more strongly than national ambitions and national pride? Such questions as these carry the student of society into a wider range of corporate life than the average man enters, but a range of life in which the welfare of every individual is involved.
315. The Significance of National Life.—The nation is a group of persons, families, and communities united for mutual protection and the promotion of the general welfare, and recognizing a sovereign power that controls them all. ”

“ I recall another who was taken from the police court by a Cambridge man, put to an Industrial School, and is now touchingly grateful, not to him, but to God for the service. Some, whose spare time is in the day, will become visitors for the Charity Organization Society, Managers of Industrial and Public Elementary Schools, Members of the Committees which direct Sanitary, Shoe Black, and other Societies, and in these positions form friendships, which to officials, weary of the dull routine, will let in light, and to the poor, fearful of law, will 101give strength. ”

“ The type of government pleaded for in these pages is one which assumes that no special interest shall have precedence over the good of the social whole, and which requires that every separate interest shall be subordinated to and co-ordinated into a general scheme of social welfare. ”

“ Along with this change in expectation goes naturally a change in attitude toward the beneficiaries of social work. “There can be no line of cleavage in the advancement of public sentiment between the development of the general social agencies such as church and school and the more intensive forms which we have come to know as social work.” [41] The old view of society saw many staunch persons standing on their own feet and a few weak brethren or victimized who needed support. ”

“ The efficient local private agencies suffer in the same way from the lack of a national agency and a national standard in case work. The American Association for Social Work with Families, and the National Conference of Social Work, attempt by conference and publication to spread the knowledge of social technique and to improve the work done by existing societies. ”

“ For a reform in domestic service a moral revolution is everywhere needed, bringing with it to every person an appreciation of his responsibility to all connected with the employment, whether employer or employee. ”

“ In the first place, leaving individuals to the operation of the common motives, we may labor at the social institutions, to adjust them to the rule, that, each seeking his own, after the common apprehension of present interests, may do so consistently with acting the part of a good citizen—contributing something to the general welfare ”

“ Community Responsibility Finally social workers have come to the conclusion, many of them, that in most cases these are not private problems at all but socio-economic ones for which the social system, through government, is responsible. ”

“ Constructive community services, including education, public health, and medical services, the mental health services, the welfare of the blind, and the work of the Ministry of Labour’s employment exchanges and training centres. ”

“ The social organization system and legal regime, ranging from ancestral family and community principles and ethical and moral standards, passing through production and trade relations, solidarity and social responsibility, forms of community and state administration; up to a very complex system of laws, rules, uses and customs that embodied free work by the community, the stewardships and charges system, which allowed the orderly and balanced community life as well as relationships and exchanges with other communities or states. ”

“ In such a society individuals and communities at all levels will be schooled and experienced in self-discipline and prepared to follow conduct patterns that emphasize the principle: live and help others to live to the fullest and the utmost.
Beyond civilization lies the recognition and practice of the principle that the welfare of the whole takes precedence over the demands of any of its parts. At the same time, each part or segment of the social whole has specific rights that the directors of the whole are bound to recognize, respect, defend and implement. ”

“ They have a power given them to do good and to save from evil, not surpassed by that of any other class in the community. Let any one select the class of persons that could be dispensed with last of all, and it would be found that lawyers, merchants, doctors, and ministers would all be given up, before every family would agree to give up all aid from cooks, [57] washers, nurses and every kind of hired service in the family.
But, in addition to the power thus given to domestics in sustaining the family state, they have another most important position of usefulness. ”

“ The social will is brought to bear upon the individual through a variety of agencies. The family, the neighborhood, the church, the trade or profession, the political party, the social class—all these have their habits and maxims. They tend to mold to their type those whom they count among their members. The pressure which they bring to bear is felt as a sense of moral obligation. ”

“ The platform of the Journal will be simply that it is possible to so far increase our present intelligence about social utilities that there may be much more effective combination for the promotion of the general welfare than has thus far been organized; and accordingly help will be sought of anyone who can assist in defining the aims or in discovering the means of more rational associated effort. ”

“ Coöperation and solidarity of effort are needed on the part of the multitude of workers engaged in social work for the community—official and non-official; and in bringing this about the physician of the early future will, I am confident, take a leading part. ”

“ By some such plans relief could be afforded to all who belong to what may be called the lowest class; for the assistance of those who could be helped by tools, emigration, or money, the great Friendly Societies, the Society for Relief of Distress, and the Charity Organisation Society might act in conjunction. These societies are unsectarian, are already organised, and may be developed in power and tenderness to any extent by the addition of members and visitors. ”

“ But I wish to make it clear, in closing this chapter, that the social worker as a citizen is as much interested in these hopes for radical economic reforms as any one else can be, though she does not regard them as her special business. ”