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Is Social Work A Profession? (1915)

Early in his presentation, Abraham Flexner said: “…However, I have not been asked to decide whether social work is a full-time or a part-time occupation, whether, in a word, it is a professional or an amateur occupation. I assume that every difficult occupation requires the entire time of those who take it seriously, though of course work can also be found for volunteers with something less than all their time or strength to offer. The question put to me is a more technical one. The term profession, strictly used, as opposed to business or handicraft, is a title of peculiar distinction, coveted by many activities. Thus far it has been pretty indiscriminately used. Almost any occupation not obviously a business is apt to classify itself as a profession. Doctors, lawyers, preachers, musicians, engineers, journalists, trained nurses, trapeze and dancing masters, equestrians, and chiropodists-all speak of their profession.

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Corrections: Part I — Penal and Prison Reform

Report given at the Seventh Annual Conference of Charities and Corrections, 1880. Read By Henry W. Lord, Chairman of The Committee. “Not the slightest idea of organized reformatory measures as connected with prisoners, ever entered into the hearts of men until almost within the memory of persons now living; and the first thought of systematized prison labor as an element of discipline was an American idea, reduced to practice in the early part of the present century.”

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Supplemental Security Income

The federal and state governments now provide cash assistance to needy adults who are aged, blind, or disabled through the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program. A person who is 65 years of age or older, legally blind, or permanently or totally disabled, and who meets prescribed income and resource requirements, can receive a basic federal cash grant of up to $264.70 per month. In FY 1981, some four million persons received SSI payments, amounting to $8.3 billion in state and federal funds. The states’ share, composed of mandatory and optional supplements, was approximately 22 percent, or $1.8 billion.

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Aid for the Blind

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.

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American Social Hygiene Association Posters for Girls

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.

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Miss Bailey Says…#10

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?

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Miss Bailey Says…#9

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?

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