The importance which the President attached to this proposed legislation was underscored by the fact that this was the first Presidential message entirely devoted to public welfare ever submitted to the Congress. THOROUGH REVIEW OF PROGRAMS Your committee will recall that last year I promised a searching reappraisal of the welfare programs in preparation for the submission of a legislative program this year. To make this study, we asked and received the help of State and local welfare officials and leaders in voluntary organizations throughout the Nation. The response was not only helpful but heartening. It revealed the depth of interest and concern which has been felt among those thousands of Americans who work in this field as public administrators, executives of agencies, educators, and social workers. We organized an ad hoc committee on public welfare composed of persons with distinguished records of service in public and private welfare. This committee, with the help of a professional staff and financial aid from the Field Foundation, devoted months to an intensive study of the problems facing public assistance in the next decade and the ways in which these problems might be met. I am pleased to submit the committee's final report for the record. The CHAIRMAN. Without objection. (The committee report follows:) REPORT OF AD HOC COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC WELFARE TO THE SECRETARY OF HEALTH, EDUCATION, AND WELFARE, SEPTEMBER 1961 AD HOC COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC WELFARE, September 6,1961. Hon. ABRAHAM A. RIBICOFF, Secretary, Health, Education, and Welfare, DEAR MR. SECRETARY: The Ad Hoc Committee on Public Welfare, appointed in May 1961, is pleased to present its report to you herewith. In response to your charge to the committee, its recommendations are formulated in the following two closely related areas: Immediate Steps, which include proposals on aid to dependent children (ADC), illegitimacy, work relief, residence requirements, child welfare, the totally and partially disabled (APTD), voucher payments; earnings of youth; and Proposals for Further Action, which deal with assistance and rehabilitative services to families, improvements in the training of personnel to render these services, needed research and demonstration, and child welfare. The committee expresses its appreciation to the Field Foundation and the American Child Guidance Foundation whose generous support has enabled it to carry out its work. It is grateful as well to staff members of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, who supplied the committee with needed information it requested, and to the many individuals and organizations who so generously gave the committee the benefit of their experience and counsel. Special acknowledgment is due Wayne Vasey, dean of the School of Social Work of Rutgers University, for his skilled and indefatigable service as consultant to the committee; and Mrs. Virginia Doscher, who assisted in the preparation of the committee's final document. It is the hope of the Ad Hoc Committee that this report will aid you in your commendable desire to strengthen public welfare in America. The committee stands ready to be of any future assistance you may ask of it in the furtherance of this objective. Respectfully submitted. SANFORD SOLENDER, Chairman, Executive Vice President, National Jewish Welfare Board. Joseph P. Anderson, executive director. National Association of Social Workers. Philip Bernstein, executive director, Council of Jewish Federations & Welfare Funds. Clark W. Blackburn, general director. Family Service Association of America. Robert Bondy, director, National Social Welfare Assembly. Rudolph T. Danstedt, director, Washington branch. National Association of Social Workers. Fred DelliQuadri, dean, New York School of Social Work, Columbia University. James R. Dumpson, commissioner. New York City Department of Welfare. Loula Dunn, director. American Public Welfare Association. Fedele Fauri, dean, School of Social Work, University of Michigan. Very Rev. Msgr. Raymond Gallagher, director of Youth Services, Diocesan Catholic Charities, Cleveland, Ohio. Dorothy Height, associate director for training, Young Women's Christian Association. Raleigh C. Hobson, director, City Department of Public Welfare, Richmond, Va. Mrs. Trude Lash, executive director, Citizen's Committee for Children of New York City. Norman V. Lourie, dej aty secretary, Pennsylvania State Department of Public Hon. Justine Wise Polier, justice of the domestic court, city of New York. Mr. Pauline Ryman, director, Social Service Department, Henry Ford Hospital, Harleigh Trecker, dean. School of Social Work, University of Connecticut. John W. Tramburg, commissioner, State department of institutions and agencies, Trenton, NJ. Dr. Ellen B. Winston, commissioner, North Carolina State Board of Public Dr. Ernest Witte, executive director. Council on Social Work Education. Brief summary. Framework of the report. Immediate steps. Proposals for further action. Supplementary information. TABLE OF CONTENTS BRIEF SUMMARY The Nation's people are its most important resource. Public welfare's func tion in society is to aid in preserving and strengthening these human resources by the most efficient and economical means. Ir a fast-changing world it is essential that there be periodic review and revision of public welfare programs and operations. If public welfare is to fil its role in the Nation effectively, its policies and practices must be responsive to changing conditions. This report contains proposals for adapting public welfare to the needs and problems of the 1960's. It projects recommendatons for meeting currently pressing needs, and for more major revisions to be undertaken at the earliest possible date. Immediate steps 1. Rehabilitative services to strengthen aid to dependent children (ADC).— Accelerated and intensified rehabilitative services aimed at reducing family breakdown and chronic dependency and helping families become self-supporting and independent; provision of personnel with skills to accomplish this by support of training. 2. ADC legislation, recent amendments and proposals for further changes.— Extend present provision related to unemployed parents and foster home care, add a provision to include in the assistance grant disabled and unemployed fathers living at home, and require complete compliance by September 1962 with the suitable homes provision. 3. Measures for studying and dealing with the problem of illegitimacy.— Initiate a thorough evaluation of the general problem in all segments of the population and undertake rehabilitative activities among persons receiving assistance. 4. Federal participation in work relief.-Federal funds to be made available for grants to persons on work relief programs with appropriate standards and safeguards. 5. Improvement of care for children.-Substantial improvements and expansion of child welfare services including Federal support for day care services. 6. Earnings of youth on ADC.-Partial exemption of earnings of youth to provide incentive for work and development of responsibility. 7. Removal of residence requirements for assistance.-Financial incentives to States to encourage progress toward elimination of residence requirements as an eligibility factor for public assistance. 8. Voucher payments under suitable provisions.-Use of voucher payments for assistance grants as an alternative for cash assistance in suitable situations with proper safeguards. 9. Extension of aid to the disabled.-Inclusion of temporarily and partially disabled persons in eligibility for assistance. 10. Experimentation and progress in research and demonstration.- Development of new information to aid in attacking problems of dependency and family breakdown and to discover the best ways of meeting the whole range of problems in public welfare. Proposals for further action 11. Assistance and rehabilitative services to families.-A new approach to attacking the needs of families through a single category of assistance which makes it possible to give service to the complete family as a unit through intensified rehabilitative services. 12. Improving personnel for rehabilitative services.—A major attack on the problem of graduate and inservice training with a 10-year target for training of personnel of State and local public welfare agencies. 13. A stronger role for basic child welfare services.-Dealing effectively with the hazards that jeopardize the well-being of many of the Nation's children by stronger child welfare services. 14. Provision for continuing program of research and special demonstration projects. A program designed to encourage and assist States to incorporate research and demonstration as fundamental elements of their program operations. The task in the 1960's FRAMEWORK OF THE REPORT The Nation's people are its most important resource. Public welfare's function in society is to aid in strengthening these human resources by the most efficient and economical means. In the past 26 years progress toward this end has been achieved under the social insurance, public assistance, and child welfare programs. People have been restored to productive employment or to a greater degree of self-care. Families have been maintained, children and aged provided protection, and disabled cared for. These programs were originated, however, under conditions vastly different from those of today. Since that time There have been basic changes in the industrial and agricultural economy; considerable additional knowledge has been acquired about cause and effect in human behavior; there have been sweeping social and cultural changes; large numbers of people have changed geographic location, often moving to a totally new kind of community (rural to urban, urban to suburban); industries have shifted from one section of the country to another, many times with profound effects on the economy of both the communities they leave and the ones they come to; new work skills have been required as agriculture has become more mechanized and industry more automated; medical advances have revolutionized health care. These drastic shifts in the Nation's life have had direct effects on its people. New social problems have been created and old ones have been aggravated. Increasing numbers of those who find it difficult to compete in a complex and demanding society become the casualties of progress. Among them are those who have been denied an opportunity to make the most of their innate capacities because of lack of health care, discrimination, inadequate education and training, physical or mental handicap, family breakdown, or circumstances of birth. 84071-62-6 To meet the stern demands of this decade, public welfare services must progress and change to meet today's needs and opportunities. Changes are needed, both small and large, and they must be made. Public welfare must contribute to the attack on such problems as dependency, juvenile delinquency, family breakdown, illegitimacy, ill health, and disability; reduce their incidence, prevent their recurrence, and strengthen or protect the vulnerable or helpless in a highly competitive world. Unless effectively dealt with, these problems pyramid, affecting society as a whole and extending their consequences in troubled families from one generation to the next. A second 6 third generation of a family receiving welfare is a challenge to the Nation to recognize that financial help alone has not been enough. Public welfare should be a positive, wealth-producing force in society. It must be more than a salvage operation, confined to picking up the debris from The wreckage of human lives. Hupporting American principles The American people are traditionally generous in their response to human suffering. They have a strong innate sense of fairness and recognize the relationship between opportunity and freedom. They also believe strongly in individual responsibility and place a high premium on independence and selfmaintenance. Americans want help to be given when it is needed, but they want to be sure also that help is going only to those who really need it. While studies have repeatedly shown that the incidence of fraud in public assistance is generally less than 1 percent, any amount is to be decried. Where fraud occurs in public welfare, it reflects a basic weakness in the standards of moral responsibility in modern society just as this is evinced in cheating on income tax, scofflaw behavior, graft, and embezzlement, and in other aspects of everyday life. Assurance that aid goes only to those who are legally eligible for it can best be safeguarded by adequate numbers of well-qualified staff to evaluate the needs of recipients and determine their qualifications for receiving help. An important function of these workers, too, is to help people on assistance understand the responsibilities which go with the benefits they receive. A constructive public welfare approach rests on the belief that capacities of persons to meet their problems and to behave responsibly can be reinforced by knowledgeable, well-directed help which builds their self-respect. The challenge requires cooperation Welfare shares the burden of dealing with the many problems created by social and economic conditions with other programs such as public health, vocational rehabilitation, education, the social insurances, and urban development. In many instances, people who require public welfare services also have health, school, housing, and vocational problems. Private welfare agencies, too, have an important role in the total welfare program. They have traditionally played a vital part in the Nation's welfare effort and have a basic function to perform in meeting social needs. It is characteristic of America to meet its requirements through a variety of social institutions. A cooperative relationship between private and public welfare agencies is essential. The role of Government The scope, the intensity, and the cost of the Nation's social problems demand vigorous national leadership in working toward their solution. There must be a consistent and positive policy in using the resources of the Federal Government to raise the level of assistance and rehabilitative services in public welfare throughout the country, to establish and maintain standards for assistance and services, and to support the analysis of welfare needs and ways of meeting them. This is national leadership in its finest sense. The goal of Federal effort should be that of helping individuals and families wherever they live to achieve their highest level of productivity and responsibility. There are few problems that are strictly local, State, or even regional. Needs that are nationwide in scope demand national attention. But they are a concern also of State and local government where the people live. Recognition of this productive partnership in the present structure of public welfare has proved successful and is consistent with the American system of government. Needed changes should be made within this structure and problems should be solved in ways which do not weaken the prevailing local-State-National balance. Before the Nation today is a great opportunity to expand the effectiveness of one of its institutions. Doing so could give dynamic forward impetus to the Nation; it could also ultimately reduce the cost of public welfare services. Internal and external factors The proposals and recommendations presented in this report inevitably involve implications for organization and structure in public welfare programs. These matters were not appropriate to this committee within its charge. Because of their great importance in accomplishing the objectives outlined in this report, however, it is urged that they be given careful attention. The quality of public welfare services, as well as the efficiency with which they are provided, depends on the effectiveness of their organization and the suitability of the structure in which they are provided. The concept of rehabilitation is common to all programs and services designed to maintain and improve the health and welfare of people. Coordination of all these efforts should be sought and every attempt made to avoid fragmentation of service. Related parts should be brought together in the interests of unity and efficiency. Public attitudes on welfare services and understanding of it also are a key factor in determining how effectively welfare dollars will be used to serve the community and those who are helped. There is evidence, however, that the public has not received sufficient or accurate enough information about the purposes of public welfare programs, the legislative provisions and principles on which they are based, the requirements for administering them efficiently, or the adjustments needed to adapt them to changing conditions. This situation is a matter of primary concern and should be given prompt and thoroughgoing attention. People are quick to respond when an individual is in need. They find it more difficult to conceive of and relate to needs of masses of people. This tendency should be taken into account in efforts to communicate generally information about public welfare. Bases for the recommendations Many social and personal difficulties originate in the failure or inability of the family unit to fulfill its functions adequately. This is not always due only to circumstances within the family, but also to failure of other social institutions to undergird the family. A new and dynamic approach to strengthening family life in America must supply the dimension of social welfare endeavors in the 1960's. The recommendations of this report are designed to reinforce and support family life through rehabilitation, prevention, and protection. They are also intended to reduce the wide disparities in the contributions made to this goal by welfare programs throughout the country. Accordingly, `the following are basic to all the proposals of this report: Rehabilitative services by professionally trained personnel.-Financial assistance to meet people's basic needs for food, shelter, and clothing is essential, but alone is not enough. Expenditures for assistance not accompanied by rehabilitative services may actually increase dependency and eventual costs to the community. The very essence of a vital program should be full use of all rehabilitative services including, but not confined to, provision of financial assistance. The ultimate aim is to help families become self-supporting and independent by strengthening all their own resources. Achieving this requires the special knowledge and skill of social workers with graduate training and other well-trained specialists. Reaching people before they become dependent should be inherent in these programs. It costs society less to prevent a problem or deal with it in its earlier stages than to correct it after it has become serious. Adequate levels of financial assistance to needy persons and families.-The consequences of deprivation are likely to produce children who overcrowd health facilities, correctional institutions, and other community facilities, and grow to adulthood as liabilities to society. Inadequate assistance levels threaten the unity and stability of families, yet modern knowledge of human behavior has clearly demonstrated the inestimable value to children of growing up in a family. In addition to the advantages to the child and to society, it also costs the community less when a child can be raised in a family instead of being placed elsewhere. |