Silver Offers Aid Plan Suggestions

Following are extracts from addresses delivered before the National Conference of Jewish Social Service in Atlantic City.

Jewish Social Service Bureau, Detroit

While it will take many years for public welfare departments to grow into family case work organizations of the caliber represented by our best private agencies, and there are many factors-political and economic-which might retard their progress, there is no inherent reason why they should not continue to expand the areas of their work and improve their standards of relief and case work performance.

Jewish family agencies will doubtless participate and help in this developmental process. But during this period-and we need not at this time prognosticate beyound it-relief will continue to play an important role in the work of the Jewish agencies.

1. In the first place, as long as and wherever there are groups of clients ineligible for public outdoor relief, the Jewish segments of those groups-must continue to be the responsibility of the Jewish agency. From the point of view of social policy, this is a justifiable and humane desideratum, and from the standpoint of Jewish communal organization it is an essential and almost unavoidable conclusion.

2. Secondly, comes the question of supplementation of the public agency’s relief. The practice in various cities differs on this point. Some public agencies permit, and even encourage, supplementation; others are definitely opposed to it. Personally, the writer believes in supplementation as a policy, wherever the relief of the public agency is below the minima of adequacy-adequacy as understood before the depression. However the attitude of the public organization and the finances of the Jewish agency allow it, I should be in favor of supplementation.

3. In any event, supplementation on a case-work basis appears to me to be a principle that should be welcomed by both public and private agencies. There may be very good reasons against supplementation as a general policy, but no agency deserves the name of case working agency if it is unable or unwilling to appreciate the point that certain cases should have allowances higher than the inadequate standards possible for the great bulk of the clients. If a competent case work investigation discloses the need for more generous relief for families A and B (bearing in mind that this generosity may not be possible for the rest of the families, C to Z), it seems obvious that, in the interest of good family case work, such relief should be granted. And if the public agency cannot, under its rules, make such exceptions, the Jewish agency should give the additional amounts.

4. Another type of supplementation is the relief intended for special needs which the budget of the public agency does not provide. Where supplementation is not the general policy these needs should of course be of an exceptional nature and be granted on a case-by-case basis. The difference between this class of supplementation and that discussed above lies largely in the fact that the former are more obvious and are more likely to be acceded to, or even requested by, the public agency. Illustrations of “special needs” are scholarships, house furnishings, expensive medical (such as glandular) and dental work, and so on.

5. Closely allied to “special needs” are services which the public agencies do not recognize in their relief policies, such as housekeeping and helpers, temporary boarding care of children (where the family agency may be responsible for that) and similar provisions. Family life may frequently be preserved from disintegration by the use of these facilities long practiced by progressive Jewish agencies.

6. The sixth item on our program of relief for Jewish agencies refers to cases which present complicated problems and familial situation that require the best of individualized service and the highest of case work skills. Because these requisites will generally be found to a higher degree in the Jewish agency, it will be necessary to accept such cases. Sometimes this will be necessary because the alternative of a joint handling of the case-with the public agency giving relief and the Jewish, giving “service”-may not be possible to work out satisfactorily on an administrative basis, or may not be desirable from the family’s point of view. Again, the acceptance of these cases may be necessary because such families are likely to require more liberal relief, either by the Jewish agency supplementing, or assuming the entire cost.

7. Finally, for the sake of completeness, there will be a miscellaneous category of unclassifiable cases which the Jewish agency will continue to have. A type that will be found in many communities will be the group of cases that are in danger of deportation if they become known to a public agency. Quite aside from motives of humanity, Jewish public opinion will not permit a Jewish agency to subject these families to such a hazard.