In another case the mother complained of the special investigator arriving one evening while she was taking a bath.

He pushed past her 9-year-old daughter who answered the door, looked in the bedroom, all closets and the bathroom searching for a man or evidence of male occupancy. He had no warrant. He did find a suit in a closet belonging to the mother's boy friend, who visited her on weekends and about whom the department had been fully informed. Nevertheless, assistance was discontinued on the assumption a man was living full-time with the family and they should look to him for supportsupport which the boy friend could not provide. The mother and daughter appeared destitute and malnourished at the time of the interview.

This study found no evidence that this method had any deterrent effect and the Department could give the study director no list of ADC cases discontinued as a result of such investigation.

X

How To Strengthen ADC

In County, State, and Nation

The essential kernel of this report's recommendations is summed up like this:

"The administration, operations and philosophy governing ADC in Cook County should be reoriented to the needs and welfare of the child, rather than to the behavior of its parents. ... The ultimate objective of helping the ADC children develop their maximum capacities must be kept in mind. The extent to which a positive and constructive program is instituted will determine the kind of future citizens these children will become."

Twenty-five years after a program called “Aid to Dependent Children" was launched, hailed by all as a great step forward in social progress, this fundamental reason for its existence needs to be shouted from the housetops. In the midst of the clamor for checking eligibility, the necessary first step so that public funds will not be wasted or misspent, the really constructive role of ADC has been lost sight of.

Broken into its parts, this all-embracing recommendation covers certain "musts."

For Cook County

1. Public welfare services must be geared to the specific problems, strengths and weaknesses of individual families. Some ADC families should be helped to achieve economic or personal independence, while for others a better life is the main goal. For some families the most constructive plan is to keep them on ADC as long as they remain eligible, as intended by the state and federal statutes, and to help the mother plan for her eventual self-support when the children are past ADC age.

Such rehabilitative services, especially social casework, can be provided by the county department itself. Other specialized, rehabilitative services are needed from other public and voluntary community resources.

2. Eligible families must not be rejected. It is as important for the responsible officials of the department to make certain that eligible families are given assistance as it is to see that ineligible families are not given aid.

3. Nocturnal surprise visits by special investigation units must be discontinued. This destructive method has no place in a public welfare program. Eligibility can be established and confirmed by other means.

4. Budget standards should be raised to cover living costs.* Budgets should meet the provisions of the Illinois Public As

sistance Code for a "reasonable subsistence compatible with health and well-being," and as an aid to rehabilitation. Expenses for working members of the family should be more realistically budgeted. Specific family needs should be met.

5. Specialized services should be drawn on. More use should be made of specialized services both within and outside the Department of Public Aid to help resolve problems with which the caseworker is unable to deal, such as diagnosis and treatment; marital counseling; vocational guidance, training and placement; vocational rehabilitation; adult education; psychological services.

6. Policy on working mothers should be reconsidered. The basic intent of the ADC provisions of the Social Security Act is to keep mothers in the home to care for their children. Any other plan for the family must make certain the present and future interests of the child are fully safeguarded. Some mothers can work outside the home without neglecting their children; others cannot.

It is also imperative that after-school plans for the older children of working mothers be satisfactory, or the cost to the community in personality disorders, in delinquency and in illegitimacy will continue to increase.

7. Cook County should experiment with special budget allowances to provide incentives for employable adult family members to work.

8. Intake process should be revised and simplified. The intake, application and elegibility process should be staffed by the most experienced and competent personnel in the department. An atmosphere of helpfulness and understanding should prevail, and enough time should be given each applicant to gain an understanding of her problems and needs.

9. Specialized ADC caseloads should be established.

10. Group counseling should be provided ADC mothers, but not as a substitute for individual casework.

11. Size of ADC caseloads should be geared to service required. Caseloads not exceeding 30 with complicated problems should be assigned to experienced caseworkers who have completed graduate training; of 60 for families with less complicated problems assigned to caseworkers with at least one year of graduate training; of about 100 for those with few problems except the need for financial assistance assigned to caseworkers with a minimum of one year of successful experience. 12. The caseworker's mountain of paper work should be cut down.

*Standards up to 1959 prices became effective October 1, 1961.

On State Level

Recommendations for ADC in Illinois are outlined here for their possible value to other states, equally troubled by the failure of the Aid to Dependent Children program.

1. Public-welfare services should put into effect the 1956 ADC Amendments, to the Social Security Act stressing rehabilitation. The Illinois Public Aid Commission should make specific, and mandatory on the counties, the rehabilitative services to be provided ADC families. Restoring families to self-support will cost less in the long run. Extra personnel, adequate budget standards, training and other staff development measures, and the necessary salary revisions should be authorized.**

2. Budget standards should be based on today, not 17 years ago.* They should provide for "decent and healthful standards of living," as the Illinois Public Assistance Code specifies. Allowances for working members of the family should reflect actual costs of working. Older children who go to work should be allowed to keep a fair share of their earnings.

3. Preventive medical and dental care should be provided. 4. Full use should be made of federal matching funds. At present Chicago and the State, while checking ADC applications for eligibility, are spending millions of dollars in General Assistance, without matching federal funds, on temporary aid to families in need. This aid could be granted from ADC funds, on evidence of presumptive eligibility, and if eligibility is not proved, charged instead against General Assistance.*** 5. Proof of eligibility should be speeded up.

On National Level

1. Federal assistance should be given to all children equally. Children can be just as hungry and deprived in the state of Alabama as in the state of Washington. They need food, clothes, medical attention, school supplies, bus fare. Yet ADC budgets vary as much as one-fifth between states.

2. Extra earning should be encouraged rather than penalized.

3. Unemployed fathers should be considered needy persons too. A father, unemployed or unable to earn enough to support his family, should not have to desert them in order that they

*Illinois state standards have been brought up to 1959 prices for all requirements clothing, personal incidentals, and additional items for children attending school have been added. These became effective October 1, 1961. **Salaries were increased in 1961.

***By administrative action the Illinois Public Aid Commission is making use of federal matching funds through "presumptive eligible."

may get ADC. The Greenleigh report recommends an ADC program that includes the unemployed father.*

The absence or incapacity of a parent should be removed as an eligibility requirement.

4. Quality and training of public welfare administrators, supervisors, and caseworkers must be improved. In Cook County each caseworker is responsible for spending some $200,000 a year of public funds. Most caseworkers have had no professional education, and few have had much experience in determining eligibility and providing financial assistance. Few have any skills in giving the services for prevention and rehabilitation Congress intended in the 1956 amendments.

It is urged that the January 1960 recommendations of the National Advisory Council on Public Assistance be supported. The Council recommended that the qualifications and numbers of personnel in public assistance throughout the United States should be raised; that 100 per cent federal funds be made available to the states and to accredited schools of social work for training public welfare personnel in the needed specialties, as is provided by federal funds in other specialized fields; and that states should establish such salary levels for public welfare personnel as are necessary to obtain and retain the competent personnel needed for the welfare services program.

7. State residence requirements for public assistance should be dropped. Residence requirements, which cause much hardship by excluding from aid needy persons otherwise eligible, should be dropped in Illinois as in every other state that has them. (There are only 9 states without such requirements.) They are part of a national crazy quilt pattern that is bewildering and archaic. Also there is no evidence-in Cook County or elsewhere — that they prevent people from moving, nor that people move to get aid.

Residence requirements grow out of the old English Poor Laws, and are completely out of place in our industrial society which requires a large and mobile labor force. The Federal government should agree to participate financially only in public assistance programs which are open to all individuals otherwise eligible.

*Since this study report was made the Federal government temporarily has extended ADC to apply to homes of unemployed fathers. Illinois was one of the first states to take advantage of “ADC-U." It enacted legislation to implement the program which went into effect May 1, 1961. All states, including some with tremendous numbers of unemployed, have not availed themselves of this legislation.