The discussion up to this point has dealt with the family which has
not fallen into distress. It has been confined to problems of
adjustment. But there are numerous families which fall into distress
and need the services of the social case-work agency. Because of
limitations of space and because the principles applying to their care
and treatment apply to other kinds of service, the following
discussion will treat only of agencies concerned with the care of
immigrant families in need of material aid. Of the 8,529 families
cared for by the Cook County agent, 6,226 were from the foreign
groups, and of the 569 under care by the Cook County Juvenile Court in
its Funds to Parents' Department, 386 were foreign born.[72]
Attention is called, however, to the fact that the special application
to the care of foreign-born families of the principles supposed to
guide the conduct of good agencies in their care of any family calls
for the elaboration of much more skillful devices and for much more
extensive and closely knit organization than has yet been developed.
This chapter deals only with these special applications of general
case-work principles.
The principles of care in any case of need are: (1) That such care
shall be based on adequate understanding of the immediate individual
problem; (2) that it shall be adapted to the special need; (3) that it
shall look toward the restoration of the family to its normal status;
and (4) that treatment, whether in the form of relief or service,
shall be accompanied by friendly and educational supervision and
co-operation.
These are no simple tasks when the family is English speaking, native
born, and when no particular difficulties arise from difference in
language and in general domestic and social habits. With the
non-English-speaking family, the agency is faced with difficulties at
each of these points. There is first the problem of getting at the
facts as to the nature and extent of the distress and the occasion of
the family breakdown.
In addition to the foreign-born families who actually need material
assistance there are many who, because they are laying aside part of
their income either to meet past debts or future needs, are living
below the standard prevailing in their community. This family needs to
be urged to spend more rather than to save. Unless the agency coming
in contact with it digs below the apparent poverty and finds the real
income, it will be tempted to give pecuniary aid rather than the
personal service the family is in need of. Its service must not result
in increased dependency.
Special care in applying this principle of all good case work needs to
be exercised in the case of the foreign-born family. Moving from one
continent to another, with almost every element in the situation
changed, makes the adjustment of the family to normal and healthy
standards a delicate and important one. We have been told, for
example, by thoughtful members of the Italian group, that in their
judgment their fellow-countrymen are often led, through unwise
alms-giving, not only to pretend to be poorer than they are, but to
live in conditions of squalor detrimental to their well-being.
In fact, in order to understand that normal state from which the
family departs when its members become applicants for aid from a
case-work agency, the representatives of the agency must have at
command facts with reference to the standards and practices prevailing
in the particular community from which the family under consideration
comes. Only then can the need of the family be estimated with any
degree of exactness.
When the facts are learned and the nature and extent of the need are
understood, there is the question of resources available for treatment
and the question of methods to be used in building and maintaining the
family life and in fostering the process of adjustment between its
life and that of the community as a whole.
To be able fully to utilize resources, to forecast the effect of
certain kinds of care, it is surely desirable for the agency to know
the life of the national group into which the family has come, the
resources to which the family itself has access, and the ways in which
others of the group expect care to be given.