The Community Course
Part 3 - Specific Community Interests
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18. Community Social Services: Welfare, Relief, and Delinquency

The Magnitude of the Problem
The social service agencies of the country constitute a vast and far flung institution, with scores of thousands of workers, with millions of case records, and with a highly specialized technique and a voluminous literature - all supported by taxes and contributions. This vast outpouring of effort, together with that of crime prevention agencies, provide some indication of the extent to which things have gone wrong with human life and society.

To some degree this failure is due to shortcomings of biological inheritance, and can be overcome only by eugenic means. A combination of education, legislation, and a sense of social responsibility are needed to meet that issue.

To a very considerable degree those meeting with acute difficulty are suffering from cultural deficiency, from bad bringing up. Such traits as slovenliness, laziness, wastefulness, intemperance, and instability very often are due, not to inbred shortcomings, but to living with families and associates who also have those shortcomings in their upbringing. There are various approaches to this problem. The almost universal craving to be self respecting and respected is a powerful help. Through school and recreation and through living in a helpful, friendly, self-respecting community, especially if someone will believe in them, children are spurred to surmounting such shortcomings, and to becoming normal citizens.

Still another cause of social failure is economic exploitation and social exclusion. During the process of general correction of the shortcomings of the social order, victims of exploitation need to be given a lift by society to enable them to overcome such handicaps.

Lastly, there are victims of accidental circumstance, such as the death of the breadwinner, or extreme economic depression. The principle of "bear ye one another's burden,” of general social insurance, gives such persons a clear right to the assistance of society.

Complexity of the Problem
If these various causes of personal difficulties should be segregated so that each person in difficulty should represent a single case, then the handling of welfare, relief, and delinquency would be greatly simplified. However, the various causes of difficulty are inextricably mixed in innumerable combinations. Personal difficulty may result from a large degree of a single cause, or from a combination of several causes, each present to a limited degree.

Lack of Skills
In large cities there are specialized, experienced workers to deal with many phases of trouble. In a small community, unless it is a suburb, there is no such abundance of professional skill. Often all such services are administered by persons of no special training or qualifications, and sometimes by politicians or political appointees who have neither qualifications nor interest in their work. Even in some fine old self-respecting communities one will find these social services crudely and wretchedly handled. 

Little by little, national, state, and county organizations are supplying professional supervision for small community social services. Yet, these are sometimes perfunctory. A single intelligent, faithful person, or a small committee or a Community Council, may give intelligent direction and human quality to relief, delinquency, and other welfare problems, by working steadily through the years and keeping in touch with present-day literature and practice in the field. In fact, in a community where that kind of intelligent interest is available, a common sense human treatment can be given to individual difficulties with better results than in large cities where professional workers are compelled by circumstances to work partly by impersonal rule and routine. 

Community as a Solution
This brief discussion of relief and delinquency is placed near the end of the syllabus because, if major attention is given to creating opportunities and incentives for normal living, the residue of failures to be treated directly will be far less. A study of cases of personal trouble in a community of about two thousand disclosed a few families who seemed to be mentally deficient, and who were chronic troubles to the community. A larger number of families suffered from cultural deficiencies, that is, from bad bringing up. The bulk of failure and delinquency seemed to be due to lack of training for vocations, to lack of economic opportunity, to lack of opportunity for social interests and outlets, and in some cases to sheer accident of circumstance. The kind of community development pictured in this syllabus would relieve the larger part of these difficulties, and would ameliorate many of the others. Lack of economic training and opportunity ranked as the chief cause of immediate difficulty. Back of that lies inadequate character ­building, and a social order which tends often to the breakdown of character and of economic security.

Delinquency
In a good family if one of the children has a period of waywardness, recklessness or rebellion, the family rallies to his support. At home there is both discipline and encouragement, sustained and directed by affection. In case of some breach of the peace, or of injury to neighbors' property, or of stealing, there is effort in the family to treat the matter as evidence of human frailty or of immaturity. The family seeks the aid of friendly associations, education, medical care, appeal to personal aspiration or to family pride. There is effort to avoid any arrest or legal action which would have a court record. Gener­ally such effort is successful. 

Modern treatment of delinquency is of that kind. Just as parents say to themselves, “What have we done to bring about this condition?," so these dealing with juvenile delinquency ask what conditions society has created or permitted that may have caused the delinquency. Effort is made to correct those conditions and to educate and encourage the delinquent in living a normal life. Studies of the effect of this kind of treatment in specific cases show that it has a very considerable degree of effectiveness. Its effectiveness would be greater if the environment of those in trouble could be more completely controlled.

A small community may present the best or the worst conditions for deal­ing with juvenile delinquency. Where there is no community organization, and little community spirit, and where specialized welfare service is not available, the small town may be about the worst place for the development of juvenile delinquents and other social failures. On the other hand, if the spirit of a small community is that of a family, with an attitude of mutual responsibility and mutual helpfulness, and if even a very few friendly-spirited people qualify themselves in the best present methods for working with delinquency and removing its causes, the small community may be more successful than any other in helping those who have failed to maintain its standard.

Examples of Help
In a certain small Midwestern community a family with a poor background was down and out. It had lost caste and lost its pride. The oldest boy, about seventeen, had become a clever thief, and was teaching his art to his younger brothers and sisters. Without creating a court record against him, this boy was sent to a "clinic" for six months. where he was reeducated in a friendly spirit. When he returned home he worked on his brothers and sisters, and undid the habits he had taught them. With the help of the community he got a steady job. He is now supporting himself and his mother and brothers and sisters. He knows he has at least one friend in the community to whom he can go in trouble. The situation was worked out by members of the community, not by professionally trained social workers. But those few community members had made themselves acquainted with modern methods for dealing with juvenile delinquency.

Remedies for Delinquency
Of the hundreds of Community Councils in America, most of them, especially those which are the outgrowth of the California movement, are concerned chiefly with delinquency and with efforts to correct the immediate conditions which lead to delinquency. A disreputable drugstore is eliminated. A news dealer is persuaded to discontinue selling salacious literature. Wholesome recreation is provided to make roadhouses less popular or "necessary." School lunches are provided, and pupils unable to pay for them are given tickets by the school principal, which are used as any other tickets without any evidence of charity. Decent clothing is assured, similarly without discrimination. Boys and girls in particular trouble may be put under the care of temporary guardians or “friends,” who take personal interest in helping them to overcome their difficulties. The respectable citizen who calls this "pampering,” does not hesitate to use such methods with his own children. Community co-ordination councils may have overemphasized this part of community life, but they have helped to show the way in the treatment of delinquency. 

Relief and Welfare
The care of local relief and welfare problems today is partly national, partly state, partly county, and partly local. In a small community those dealing with welfare and relief can be in touch with the actual situations. It is their business to unify all the efforts being made, to prevent neglect and favoritism, to correct oversights, and in general to fill in any gaps and make up deficiencies in the treatment of individual cases.

Members of a community can turn welfare work into mutual helpfulness, and relief into neighborly, friendly sharing of burdens. That spirit very often pervaded the ancient community. Without it relief may be bitter, and welfare work may develop resentment, or a relaxation of personal responsibility, or even a scheming to get everything possible from society. The quality of nonprofessional, neighborly friendship, informed and guided by professional knowledge, will give the best results in community relief and welfare work.