Page 22 - To Dragma May 1934

40 To DRAGMA JANUARY, 1932 41

In the section of the Kentucky mountains served by the Frontier A!
Nursing Service no person or organization can be said to have under-
taken social work in the professional sense of the word. Obviously the 1-
occasional mission station, their community centres, schools and hos-
pitals, have a distinctly "social" function in the community. Equally Life and health for mountain
apparent is it that the work of the Frontier Nursing Service is a posi-
tive contribution to individual and community well-being—a social hal '.i s.
contribution. Nor can a region be said to be devoid of social work
where neighborliness is practiced. It is generally conceded that social with which to handle them. However good a neighbor may be, he can-
work began as neighborliness. But all this is social work in a diffused not make it his business to "cover a field," so that the case neglected by
sense of the word. immediate neighbors is likely to go entirely neglected. From the point
of view of the Frontier Nursing Service, membefs of its staff have their
One of the essentials of a good neighbor, a good "natural" social professional duties which are strenuous and imperative. So that neigh-
worker, is that he should have the sympathetic awareness of a neigh- borliness alone is not enough.
bor's trouble, which in turn generates an impulse to help. Another is
that he should have the means at hand for helping. On the first score In keeping with the policy of thorough training for its nursing
the mountain people as a whole rank high. Even a superficial acquaint- work and of the most up-to-date methods and practices, the Frontier
ance with the ways of the mountaineer reveals his willingness to share— Nursing Service has for several years recognized the desirability of
means and strength and wisdom—however meagre his own store may be. having on its staff a person trained for handling social problems. The
If among the mountain people the willingness to be helpful is easily innovation means, therefore, something only partly new; a phase of the
apparent, even more evident is the poverty of resources out of which Frontier Nursing Service's work more intensively done; and, hope-
help may be given. Nothing is more uniformly true of them than that fully done with more deftness and economy of time and effort. Hope-
very meagreness of means, the gift of physical, social, and economic iso- fully also, professionalizing the many-sided task of neighborliness does
lation. Under these circumstances the "natural" social worker functions not necessitate the loss of those desiderata inherent in neighborliness
but lamely. itself.

The personnel of the occasional mission station have also functioned If the field is not literally uncharted then, in the sense that nothing
as neighbors. Their neighborliness grows out of the same natural sources sn a hitherto been done in the way of social work, it is uncharted in the
as does that of neighbors in the more usual sense of the word. Their
participation means not only an increase in the ranks of neighbors as
such but an addition of skill, understanding and material means.

Fundamental among the dreams of the Frontier Nursing Service is
the hope for an equitable distribution of opportunities, opportunities for
life, health and full development of personality and powers—oppor-
tunities denied to no sector of the American population more completely
than to the mountain people. The Frontier Nurse is fortunately placed
for discovering the social problems that grow out of this lack. Has she
not already the neighborly impulse, she could hardly escape developing
it in this environment. The nature of her association with the people
being what it is, and the philosophy of her organization being wrhat it
is, she inevitably becomes another "natural" social worker, and the
supply of neighbors and means for neighborliness are augmented.

It is easy to see that social work purely on this basis has its in-,
adequacies as well as its good points. Help from a neighbor is natural
and easily acceptable. The neighbor knows his "client" well and does
not have to go through the meticulous process of verifying the facts
lest he be imposed upon. On the other hand the neighbor has his own
needs and those of his family to look out for, and if one lives on a
precarious margin those needs are all if not more than he can attend to.
Nor do neighbors often acquire, in the course of ordinary living, the
insight necessary to discover the more deep-lying needs or the skill