Bishop Thomas Joseph Shahan (1857-1932): First President National Conference of Catholic Charities, Long Time Rector, Catholic University of America and Noted Historian By: Michael Barga Introduction: Thomas J. Shahan was a Catholic historian, professor, and Rector of The Catholic University of America (CUA) for the majority of his adult life. Shahan’s main contribution to social…
Continue Reading »Title X of the Social Security Act of 1935 authorized federal funds to be distributed to the states for financial assistance to the needy blind residents of their state. The first authorization was for an appropriation of $3,000,000 for the fiscal year ending June 1936; and and there is hereby authorized to be appropriated for each fiscal year thereafter a sum sufficient to carry out the purposes of this title.
Continue Reading »The American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) is a national nonprofit organization that expands possibilities for the more than 25 million people with vision loss in the U.S. AFB’s priorities include broadening access to technology; elevating the quality of information and tools for the professionals who serve people with vision loss; and promoting independent and healthy living for people with vision loss by providing them and their families with relevant and timely resources.
Continue Reading »The “Youth and Life” posters were designed to educate teenage girls and young women about the dangers of sexual promiscuity and urge them to embrace moral and physical fitness. It was adapted in 1922 by the American Social Hygiene Association from “Keeping Fit,” a similar series for boys and young men.
Continue Reading »Images from the “Keep Fit” posters designed to educate young males on physical and moral fitness.
Continue Reading »In 1913, several organizations dedicated to fighting prostitution and venereal disease joined together to form the American Social Hygiene Association (ASHA).
Continue Reading »What can the relief worker do when:
• Practically every relief family in a foreign-speaking neighborhood finds the price of a ton of grapes for its year’s supply of wine?
• A family steadfastly refuses to give any information about a relative who regularly pays their rent and sends them occasional boxes of luxurious clothes?
• The family of five which is suddenly augmented by three half-grown children who, it is calmly explained, have been visiting their “auntie,” hitherto unheard of?
Continue Reading »What shall the home visitor do about:
• The unemployed son of the house who brings home an unemployed bride?
What shall the home visitor do about:
• The girl who holds out her slender earnings from the family budget and takes title to a cheap fur coat the day the family is dispossessed?
• The able-bodied youth who refused to go to a refestation camp and who has since kept himself in cigarettes by bartering the tidbits of the family grocery order?
• The mother who persistently and successfully connives to swap essentials of the food order for cream to satisfy the “weak stummick” of her 200-pound son?
• The mother who supports her stalwart eldest in his refusal to take a job that requires him to get up at six o’clock in the morning?
Families with bank accounts, families with cars, families never before touched by social agencies, now figure large in the “relief population” of these United States. How the new problems they bring, rarely encountered by case workers of a few years ago, are being treated, how workers without extensive training are being prepapred to meet situations calling for quick and discriminating judgment, are the subjects of a series of Survey articles, of which this is the eighth, drawn from day-to-day experience in busy relief offices.
Continue Reading »What should relief workers do when:
What should relief workers do when:
• A waiting client suddenly throws a paper‑weight across the office and begins to scream
• A client disrupts the waiting‑room with loud threats of what he proposes to do to the interviewer?
• A delegation with banners and baby‑carriages demonstrates noisily under the office windows?
• A large and voluble committee, with police hovering in the background, demands a hearing for its protest against the relief system?