Page 23 - To Dragma May 1934

42 To DRAGMA JANUARY, 1932 43

sense that no one knows the actual measure of the task—how much psychiatric clinics; child-placement agencies; recreation facilities, et
there is to be done nor how the sum total divides itself into the various Cetera, sources on which she may draw for the special service needed
types of social case-work problems. For example, the field covered by in a particular case. In addition to these, the urban community can
the Frontier Nursing Service is well charted medically speaking. The boast of various and effective community facilities in the way of public
Frontier Nursing Service knows what types of cases are in preponder- schools, churches, clubs, libraries, et cetera, for the development and
ance, what diseases and conditions offer the most serious problem for the enrichment of living. The social worker works against her community
group as a social unit, etc. In short, it knows where the emphasis should background. ;\s community services increase in suitability, adequacy,
be placed, what knowledge and skills are most needed, where the most and efficiency the social problems decrease in number and complexity
time and energy and materials should be expended. The social-work (assuming, of course, that among these community services is the op-
field in this region is, in the sense, totally uncharted. There are cases portunity for earning a livelihood and maintaining life decently). The
of personality maladjustment. Yes, but how frequent and how serious? efficiency of her community conditions the ease and success with which
One expects to find them relatively few because life is lived under such the social worker functions.
simple conditions. But if this conclusion is mistaken, the question then
arises of how and where psychiatric services may be had; so that the That all rural communities as a whole have not created for them-
answer to the question is important. If, on the other hand, relief prob- selves anything approaching adequate community service is common
lems figure very largely in the case load, and it seems likely that such knowledge. What is true of rural communities as a group is true in an
will be the case, what is to be the department's policy toward those extreme form of mountain communities where poverty and backward-
problems, less acute perhaps but too serious to be ignored, and offering ness exist in pronounced form—six-months, one-teacher schools, roads
opportunity for the most constructive type of social work? Then there that hardly deserve the name, churches that minister chiefly to primi-
are the cases which may be grouped under the heading of medical social tive emotionalism, practically no libraries and no organized attempt at
problems—problems distinctly social in themselves but which forestall meeting the social and recreational needs of youth.
the nurse or doctor in treatment, as well as those social problems pre-
cipitated by illness or injury. Logically these should come first in the A discussion of the natural compensation inherent in the simple
social-work program of a nursing organization. Will they in our region rural life, as over against the penalties exacted of the city dweller, is
prove to be of such numbers that the social-service department can not apropos. Obviously urban life exerts a strain and creates problems
hope to do little more than this type of work? These and many more of its own. On the other hand the rural region doubtless creates prob-
questions cannot be answered until the department has been functioning lems with their own peculiar twist, but about these we are much less
and has charted the field for itself. well informed. The point is that for the social worker the urban com-
munity as a tool chest is infinitely better equipped than is the mountain
Despite all these questions however, out of the experience of the community.
Frontier Nursing Service two things are certain in advance. First, that
there is much that needs to be done. The Frontier Nursing Service, in Given such a field she may choose to do a purely palliative j o b -
the capacity of nurse and mid-wife and neighbor, knows at first hand dispensing relief to the extent of the resources at her command; mitigat-
something of the imposing quantity of work that exists. The second ing in individual cases the suffering and unhappiness imposed by a region
thing apparent from the experience of the Frontier Nursing Service is in which life is barren of almost everything that one associates with
that the problems found among the mountain people are not greatly civilization. If the social worker hankers after the more constructive ap-
different in kind from those found among people living under urban proach and is somewhat visionary, she will not be content with this but
conditions. No one knows how much there is of a given type of case will want to set about equipping her tool chest; developing her com-
but the familiar types are practically all there; family-relief problems, munity so that it offers increasingly rich opportunity for interesting,
juvenile delinquency, dependent children, problems of vocational guid- wholesome, adequate living; enlarging its sense of responsibility for the
ance, medical social problems, sex vagaries, old age relief, et cetera-^ care of those who fail to attain that. Perhaps a good motto for a social
having their own peculiar twist, of course, but reflecting needs discover- worker anywhere is that she has no right to do for people what they
able among almost any group. are able to do for themselves; that when she has done for an individual,
a family or a group, what the immediate situation demands, she has dis-
Perhaps even more tantalizing than the question of how much there charged only half her duty until she has undertaken the task of remov-
is of each of these, is the question of how the social worker can func- gl n causes which have made her assistance necessary; that she does
tion effectively with so few resources at hand. Outside the social work- much more for her community by helping them to carry their own bur-
er's own skill, her tools are the resources that are to be had in the com- i n s than by carrying those burdens for them. An urban social worker
munity. In the urban community the social worker has at her command employed by a case-working organization may easily consider the im-
special agencies doing all sorts of specialized social work—special mediate needs of the individuals who go to make up her case-load as
schools or classes for the handicapped; vocational-guidance bureaus; Qer chief responsibility, though her task has always this constructive
^Pect of establishing self-maintenance, self-adequacy, and certainly her