One million undernourished children have benefited by the Works Progress Administration’s school lunch program. In the past year and a half 80,000,000 hot well-balanced meals have been served at the rate of 500,000 daily in 10,000 schools throughout the country.
Continue Reading »Search Results for: Social Welfare History Project
Civil Liberties–The Individual and the Community (1940)
I think I will tell you a little story that brought home to me how important it was that in every community there should be someone to whom people could turn, who were in doubt as to what were their rights under the law, when they couldn’t understand what was happening to them. I happen to go every now and then to a certain mining community and in that mining community there are a number of people who came to this country many years ago. They have been here so many years that they have no other country. This is their country. Their children have been born here. They work here. They have created great wealth for this country, but they came over at a time when there was not very much feeling of social responsibility about giving them the opportunity to learn the language of the country to which they had come, or telling them how to become citizens, or teaching about the government of this country….
Continue Reading »Meeting The Manpower Crisis In Staffing The Mental Health Facilities: The Role Of The Federal Government (1963)
Speech given by Milton Wittman, D.S.W. at the Annual Meeting of Conference of Chief Social Workers in State and Territorial Mental Health Programs, Cleveland, Ohio, May 17, 1963. “It seems inappropriate to consider the “manpower crisis” only in terms of numbers of social workers, psychiatrists, psychologists, and nurses. Rather, it seems more important to discuss the use which is made of these professions in the structure of mental health programs as they function today and as they may function in the future.”
Continue Reading »Education For Community Mental Health Practice: Problems And Prospects
The problem of professional education for community mental health practice is one that poses a number of intricate questions for both educators and practitioners. The complexity and size of the mental health problem and the growing support for mental health programs throughout the country together indicate that the field of social work must make a major effort to relate soundly to the educational needs in this field. The work of the Joint Commission on Mental Illness and Mental Health clearly indicates the need for useful data on which to assess and evaluate the current and future directions of mental health programs. There is a strong feeling among those who have some awareness of where we now stand that current efforts in mental health fall far short of meeting the vast needs. There is continued questioning of the nature and content of service available and there is a high degree of curiosity about the effectiveness of current services. We now face the disconcerting fact that we may not really be meeting these needs just by increasing the number of known and existing services; rather the implication of present-day thinking is that we need to bring about some radical changes in our working philosophy and in our practice if we are to make any realistic impression on mental health problems.
Continue Reading »White, Grace Elizabeth
Grace Elizabeth White (1899 – 1986) – Social Worker, Consultant and Professor Editor’s Note: Dr. White died in her home in Lexington, KY in June 1986. She had no survivors. Introduction: Grace White was born on October 5, 1899 in Marion, Indiana. She earned her Ph.B. from the University of Chicago in June of 1931. For…
Continue Reading »University of Chicago Settlement
The University of Chicago Settlement was established in the packing-house area in the fall of 1894 by a group of faculty members of the University of Chicago. In what is known as the “Back of the Yards” area, the heterogeneous foreign-born population had a peculiar quality that appealed to the new University: This was a place where peoples of different backgrounds might work together.
Continue Reading »Heritage from Chicago’s Early Settlement Houses (1967)
Article by Louise C. Wade. “Close cooperation with neighborhood people, scientific studies of the causes of poverty and dependence, communication of the facts to the public, and persistent pressure for reforms that would “socialize democracy”—these were the objectives of the most vigorous American settlements. According to one worker, the three R’s of the movement were residence, research, and reform.”
Continue Reading »Chicago’s Early Settlement Houses Heritage
“The Heritage from Chicago’s Early Settlement Houses: 1967,” by Louis C. Wade. “The contrast between progress and poverty in American life was obvious in the 1880s and glaring by the 1890s. Violent confrontations like the Haymarket riot and the Homestead and Pullman strikes served to illuminate the dangerous chasm, which separated the very rich from the very poor.”
Continue Reading »Maid Narratives
The stories personalize the sufferings by these southern black women who worked as young children in the cotton fields and who managed somehow to raise their children and protect their men folk in a racially hostile environment. The economic oppression they endured was echoed by legal constraints that always favored the dominant race at their expense. The norms of segregation, as the book explains, were enforced by white men bent on suppressing black men and keeping them away from their women. At the same time, these men had access to black women, a fact of which they often took advantage. The term segregation to the extent that it means separation of the races does not really apply. In any case, the social system that evolved following slavery. Consider the tremendous legal battles that ensued to keep the races separate in the schools and universities.
Continue Reading »Praglin, Laura J., Ph.D., L.M.S.W.
Laura J. Praglin, Ph.D., LMSW is an Associate Professor of Social Work at the University of Northern Iowa. Her research and teaching interests include the history of social work, especially the interaction of the early social work profession with other civicand religious organizations.
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