Fundamental Objectives of a Council of Social Agencies

By Homer Folks, Secretary, State Charities Aid Association, New York City

A Paper Presented at The National Conference of Social Work Formerly National Conference of Charities and Correction at The Fifty-Fifth Annual Session Held in Memphis, Tennessee May 2-9, 1928

The fundamental objectives of a council of social agencies, or a welfare council, are very simple, and are two in number: To find out what services (existing and new) the people of the community need from its social agencies; and to bring it to pass that the social agencies are so coordinated, equipped, and supported that they actually do render these services to the community.

In any American community, especially in any large city, we are likely to find two outstanding and parallel sets of social agencies: First, a group of public institutions and activities, completely centralized under one administrative head; and, second, a group of voluntary, non-municipal, or so called private welfare agencies, each of which is independent of all the others, whether public or private. The problem is to find out what the community really needs in the way of health and relief activities, and to bring it to pass that all these existing agencies, public and private, pull together and produce a unified effect for the benefit of the people of the locality, without loss of motion, loss of money, loss of mutual understanding, or loss of clarity of objective.

Centralization does not always coordinate. — This is easily said, but it is not easily done. One’s first impression is apt to be that centralization of control is necessary for team work, and that centralized control is certain to secure team work. It is a mistaken assumption. Centralization offers opportunity for coordination, but by no means assures it. The outstanding instance of this is the frequent lack of coordination within some of the great municipal or state departments of public welfare or public health, the subdivisions of which sometimes not only are not coordinated with each other, but are occasionally antagonistic, suspicious, and hostile toward each other.

A community chest, through its control over allotments to the various social agencies, has a somewhat similar opportunity to enforce some degree of coordination. Social conditions inevitably change, and these changes call for the enlargement of certain agencies and the diminution of others. No community chest has to deal with a static situation. Much as it might prefer not to, it is obliged to face and deal with situations involving the development or the restriction of various social agencies and their adaptations to one another.        Financial control.-Here again, however, there is the same question as to whether it is really practicable to use this power of financial control in such a way as to enforce coordination. It is inherent in the situation that a community chest will be indisposed, just as individual agencies are indisposed, to offend the sensibilities of any large group of potential givers who may be particularly interested in some particular social agency. A chest will be disposed naturally to make the most of the more appealing and popular types of social work, just as social agencies are, and less inclined to the slow process of educating the community to the underlying and essential value of more solid and enduring types of social work.

Education and voluntary coordination. — We are driven back, therefore, under any and all systems of control and support, to the slower, but perhaps more certain, methods of education and of voluntary action by the various agencies. You cannot commandeer coordination. A man coordinated against his will is uncoordinated still. You have to get people together to arrive at a common understanding. Coordination is an attitude of mind, in particular an attitude toward other people and other agencies and toward the entire community. It has to come step by step. It means hard thinking as well as right mindedness. There is no short cut to it.

Conscious self coordination, on the basis of a continuing knowledge of community needs, and with a conscious and determined purpose that these needs shall be met, is the fundamental objective of any council of social agencies, or welfare council, which is simply a shorter name for the same thing. Coordination by this method has passed the experimental stage and has produced outstanding results in numerous localities, in some of which there are community chests and in some of which there are not. It can be accomplished with or without central financing, though undoubtedly more rapid progress in team work is likely to be made with the readjustment and reconsideration which is involved in the introduction of any new system.

New York’s complicated situation. — In New York City we have a most involved situation. We have great centralized municipal departments of public health and of public welfare. We have something like I,200 voluntary social agencies. Some of them are already in community chests, notably the great majority of the Jewish social agencies. The Catholic social agencies receive a portion of their support from central financing. There were already in the field several non-financial federations. The plan of the Welfare Council is to bring together all these agencies, public and private, in a thoroughly representative organization, into a central body, for the purpose of research, conference, program making, and voluntary adjustment to a common program.

Accurate knowledge imperative. — The most essential factor, if not the starting point, in any such undertaking is provision for an adequate, authoritative study of community needs. Nothing has such attractive force as a clearly demonstrated community need, crying to be met. Such a consideration will pull where coercion would fail to push. Nothing so tends to the laying aside of prejudices, misunderstandings, and disagreement as the clear perception of a larger program, adequate to the community’s present need and calling for the utmost resources and efforts of all the agencies, working, in effect, as a unit.

Steps to secure team work. — The steps, therefore, are: first, efficient research as to social needs, preferably under the direction of the various groups of social agencies themselves; second, free and open conference as to how these community needs can best be met; third, resulting therefrom, a spirit of emulation and of renewed effort, in the inspiration of joining, not simply in promoting the activities of a particular agency, but in meeting in man fashion the recognized total need of the people of the community.

Source: Proceedings of The National Conference of Social Work Formerly National Conference of Charities and Correction At The Fifty-Fifth Annual Session Held In Memphis, Tennessee May 2-9, 1928, p.395.  http://www.hti.umich.edu/n/ncosw/