current needs and has developed specific legislative objectives for 1962. While the following list does not include all of the association's policy positions, it presents in condensed form those immediate and longer range legislative objectives which are most likely to be of current significance in improving public welfare services.

Scope of program

PUBLIC WELFARE PROGRAMS

1. The comprehensive nature of public welfare responsibility should be recognized through Federal grants-in-aid which will enable the States to provide not only financial assistance, including medical care, and other services for the aged, the blind, the disabled, and dependent children, but also general assistance and services for all other needy persons.

2. Federal financial aid should be available to assist Sates in carrying out public welfare responsibility for preventive, protective and rehabilitative services to all who require them, irrespective of financial need.

The Federal Government should participate financially in State and local projects which would encourage, extend or establish programs for self-support, self-care or the rehabilitation of persons receiving or likely to need public assistance.

To carry out these objectives State and local public welfare services should be strengthened by provision for reduced and specialized caseloads, homemakers and other specialized personnel.

3. The Federal Government should participate financially only in those assistance and other welfare programs which are available to all persons within the State who are otherwise eligible without regard to residence, settlement, or citizenship requirements.

4. Federal financial participation for medical assistance should be available to all needy individuals on the same basis.

5. The Federal Government should continue to participate financially in assistance to needy dependent children only if such assistance is available to all needy children living in the home of a relative. The circumstances of a child's birth or the suitability of the family environment should not be factors in determining eligibility for assistance, but should be dealt with through appropriate social services and judicial processes.

6. Federal financial participation in assistance and other services for needy children should be extended on a permanent basis to include both parents when in need and living in the home.

7. Provision for Federal financial participation in the maintenance of children in foster care should be continued and strengthened.

8. Child welfare services should be broadened in scope and should specifically include services for the delinquent child and provisions for day care. Federal funds authorized and appropriated should be increased sufficiently to extend, improve, and support adequate child welfare programs.

Federal financial assistance to the States to stimulate and support programs for the prevention and control of juvenile delinquency should be provided. This should include research and the training of personnel.

9. Federal financial participation should be available to the States for assistance to needy disabled persons without regard to any age requirement or any requirement that a disability be permanent and total.

10. Specific provision should be made for Federal financial assistance to States to stimulate and support services and facilities to promote the health and welfare of aged persons irrespective of their financial need.

11. The Federal Government should participate financially in the costs of any State and local civil defense welfare services.

12. Federal legislation should continue to provide funds for American nationals who are repatriated from abroad and in need of assistance and other services.

13. The Federal Government, in cooperation with the States, should study: (a) the costs and policy implications of and the alternatives to removing the restrictions on Federal financial participation in assistance payments to, or in behalf of, individuals living in mental hospitals, tuberculosis hospitals, and public nonmedical institutions; and (b) the costs and policy implications of exemption of income earned by public assistance recipients.

Methods of financing programs

14. The continuation of the Federal open-end appropriation is essential to a sound State-Federal fiscal partnership in all aspects of public assistance. Since it is not possible to predict accurately the incidence and areas of need. flexibility and comprehensiveness are necessary in financing public assistance programs.

15. Federal financial participation should be on an equalization grant basis provided by law and applicable to financial assistance, including medical care, for all needy persons; welfare services, including child welfare; and administration.

16. Any maximums on Federal participation in public assistance, including medical care, should continue to be related to the average payment per recipient and should be increased sufficiently to assure for all needy individuals reasonable standards of maintenance, comprehensive medical care of high quality and appropriate quantity, and the preservation and strengthening of family life. 17. Federal participation with respect to dependent children should be increased to a level which will assure treatment of such children equitably with that accorded other public assistance recipients.

Provisions should be made so that children with earnings from employment may be allowed to retain all or part of such earnings.

18. No change should be made in the Federal matching formulas which would result in a reduction in the Federal share of State and local administrative costs.

19. Federal aid for public assistance should be on the same basis for Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Guam as for other jurisdictions. The annual dollar limitations on Federal participation for these jurisdictions should be removed.

Administration

20. States should have the option to administer Federal funds for assistance and services by categories, by a combination of two or more of the present categories, or by a single comprehensive program covering all needy persons. 21. Adequate and qualified personnel is essential in the administration of public welfare programs. Administrative and service costs of State public welfare programs should be identified separately and Federal financial participation in such costs should be sufficient to enable States to provide for the adequate administration of all public welfare programs, and the rendering of appropriate services.

22. Adequate Federal funds should be appropriated to assist States in training State and local public welfare staff.

23. All public welfare programs, including financial assistance, medical care for needy persons, and other services, in which the Federal Government participates financially should be administered by a single agency at the local, State, and Federal level.

24. Federal, State, and local public welfare agencies should participate in and assist in the administrative coordination of all related programs in which there is Federal financial participation.

25. The Federal responsibilities relating to financial assistance and welfare services should be closely interrelated at an effective operating level.

OASDI

SOCIAL INSURANCE PROGRAMS

26. The contributory old-age, survivors, and disability insurance program. as a preferable means of meeting the income-maintenance needs of people, should be strengthened. Among the needed improvements are: making benefit payments more adequate; increasing the amount of earnings creditable for contribution and benefit purposes in line with current earning levels: broadening the scope of disability insurance protection, especially by eliminating the requirement that the total disability be of long-continued and indefinite duration; and extending coverage to earners and their dependents still excluded.

27. Health costs of old-age, survivors, and disability insurance beneficiaries should be financed through the OASDI program. The health costs of aged, surviving, and disabled individuals and their dependents who are not insured OASDI beneficiaries should be met through an effective governmental program. Arrangements for achieving this objective should take into account the priority needs of the groups to be served; availability of facilities, personnel and

services; and protection and encouragement of high quality of care, including the organization of health and related services to effect the most appropriate utilization of services and facilities.

28. The funds of the insurance program should be available to help restore persons on the OASDI disability rolls to gainful employment since such expenditures would result in a net saving to the fund and increase the number of persons rehabilitated.

29. To the extent that changes to improve the OASDI program increase the cost of the program, contributions should be increased to insure the financial stability of the program.

30. The membership of the Advisory Council on Social Security Financing should include representation from public welfare.

Unemployment insurance

31. The unemployment insurance program, as a preferable means of meeting the income-maintenance needs of unemployed people and as a means of keeping the need for public assistance to a mininmum, should be strengthened. Among the needed improvements are: establishing Federal standards which would assure more adequate benefit payments including benefits for dependents; extension of coverage to earners still excluded; provision for a minimum duration of benefits; provision for more equitable eligibility conditions; provisions for less restrictive disqualification requirements; and an increase in the amount of earnings creditable for contribution and benefit purposes in line with current earnings levels.

There should be Federal provision on a permanent basis for extended benefits during any period of extended unemployment.

Other social insurance

32. The Federal Government should provide leadership, funds, and research in order to give more effective aid to the States in the improvement of State workmen's compensation programs. Study should be given to ways of improving and extending, on a sound social insurance basis, temporary disability insurance benefits and workmen's compensation programs, with emphasis on planning for effective medical care and vocational rehabilitation.

PLANNING, RESEARCH, AND DEMONSTRATION

33. An Advisory Council on Public Welfare should be appointed periodically to study and report on all aspects of public welfare, with particular emphasis on keeping the program in line with changing social and economic conditions. 34. The Federal Government should provide leadership and adequate funds for research and demonstration and for special projects directed toward the reduction of dependence, and the strengthening of family life.

RELATED PROGRAMS

35. The Federal Government should provide leadership, funds, and research for the promotion of health and the prevention of sickness and disability contributing to dependency. Federal health programs should establish guides to encourage and enable State and local health departments to make a more effective contribution to broad programs of physical restoration. The amounts authorized and appropriated for maternal and child health and crippled children's services should be increased.

36. Public welfare has a responsibility to assure that comprehensive rehabilitative services are made available to persons who require them. Adequate funds should be available to public welfare agencies to carry out their responsibility to restore individuals to self-care and independent living and to strengthen family life. Public welfare agencies are concerned with ahe availability of adequate vocational rehabilitation services for individuals who can benefit from them. Since many eligible individuals still are deprived of vocational rehabilitation services, such services should be strengthened so that all vocational handicapped persons who present reasonable possibilities of attaining a vocational objective would be served. States should be permitted to designate the State agency which can most effectively administer the vocational rehabilitation program. 37. Federal programs should provide more effective aid to help meet the needs of mentally retarded and other handicapped children.

38. Federal programs should provide more effective aid to help meet the needs of migratory workers and their families.

31. Padecal leadership and provision for appropriate financial assistance for traz renewal the revitalization of communities where unemployment is heavy and persistent, and the retraining of unemployed workers should be strengthened. 40. Work opportunities at prevailing wages, not competitive with regular jobs in private or public employment and with other appropriate safeguards to protect the health and dignity of the worker, should be available to able-bodied recipients of assistance for whom jobs cannot be found within a reasonable time and for whom such work opportunities are desirable. Such work should, where possible, provide training and be directed toward the preservation and development of work skills. Federal financial participation should be extended to indade parments to recipients assigned to such projects.

41. A program with Federal participation should be established for the training the employment of youth through projects for the conservation of natural resences and the provision of community services.

Mr. KERR. Mr. Wayne Vasey.

STATEMENT OF WAYNE VASEY, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SOCIAL WORKERS

Mr. VASEY. I am Wayne Vasey representing the National Association of Social Workers. I am dean of the School of Social Work at Rutgers State University, New Brunswick, N.J. I am accompanied today by Mr. Rudolph T. Danstedt, director of the Washington branch office of our association.

In the past I have worked in the welfare field, public welfare field, and in local, State, and Federal areas as a county welfare director, a State welfare staff member, and at one time assistant regional representative of the Bureau of Public Assistance and other Bureau family services of what was the Federal Security Agency.

Last year, I served as consultant to Secretary Ribicoff's Ad Hoc Committee on Public Welfare. I think you heard a description of that committee, its makeup and its purpose, so I will not go into that. In deference to the committee's time, and a list of witnesses to follow I would like to file this formal statement and speak from it as briefly as possible.

Senator KERR. The statement will be made a part of the record following your oral presentation.

Mr. VASEY. Thank you.

The first observation I would like to make is our favoring the 75percent matching for services.

We think this is a definite forward step and could result in a great improvement in the administration of public welfare. We feel that public welfare agencies have been held responsible for the problems they are set up to meet and we feel that this increase of support for services could have the result of giving them more resources and probably holding them more accountable for results.

Senator KERR. Or making them better qualified to obtain results. Mr. VASEY. Pardon?

Senator KERR. Or putting them in a better position to obtain results.

Mr. VALEY. You are right.

They are not going to work any miracles; this is too tough and complicated a problem to be solved overnight. It is going to take time and a lot of work, but this will put them in a better position, we suggest.

We also, like the previous witnesses, are opposed to section 107. I certainly don't want to attempt to improve on the eloquent statements or even to match the eloquent statements that have been made. But we feel very strongly that this bill would open the door to some flagrant abuses and assaults on the dignity of people. We can understand why State and local authorities are concerned and badgered by these problems that keep coming up.

They are complicated, they are hard to solve and they can even by exasperating but they don't represent a large enough portion of the load to justify measures which might, as the first witness indicated, under the pressure of a highly charged local emotional situation lead to restrictive measures that would hurt a lot of people to get to a few, and we would strongly urge the deletion of this particular portion of the bill.

Senator KERR. The first witness, I believe, addressed her opposition to about three lines in the section.

Do you address yourself to the entire section?

Mr. VASEY. I do; we do, actually.

We think that section 108 takes care of it. We think that this particular provision is inconsistent with the general character and tenor of the measure itself.

Senator KERR. All right.

Mr. VASEY. We also have an objection to one portion of the bill which I don't believe has been mentioned by the previous witnesses. This is the section, title I, part A, improvement in servicesSenator KERR. Where is that in the bill?

Mr. VASEY. It is title I, part A, first part, very early part of the bill. It is the section which would apply to each of assistance categories, the requirement that the public welfare agency may not engage in any services designed as vocational rehabitation under the Vocational Rehabilitation Act, except to the extent agreed to by such State vocational rehabilitation agency.

We certainly are not advocating any confusion of functions on the part of agencies but we think this would be an extremely difficult rule. to apply.

Sometimes a problem is not easy to classify as vocational rehabiltation or welfare and it could lead to a situation in which jurisdictional considerations could take priority over a real constructive plan to meet human needs.

The cooperation between vocational rehabilitation and public welfare in many States has been excellent. It has proceeded along the lines of administrative operation and agreement and we think that is a better way than trying to legislate the behavior of these agencies. So we are opposed to this particular portion of the bill. Senator KERR. Do you favor its deletion or amendment? Mr. VASEY. We favor its deletion.

I think I had better talk on the positive side here. We certainly endorse the proposals extending ADC to needy children of unemployed parents, the scheduled increases and authorization for child welfare services and we also think this program of day care is extremely important. We believe that by providing this resource, the care of children who have to have such care out of their own homes during the day can be vastly improved with some standards applied and some