and referring cases in which there is reason to believe there may be fraud by assistance applicants or recipients;

(c) Methods that will be used in investigation of instances of suspected fraud that are consistent with the legal rights of individuals;

(d) Designation of a point of responsibility within the State welfare department for the followup, and, if indicated, referral for legal action, of cases in which fraud appears likely;

(e) State supervision, review, and control, by which the agency will assure that the plan provisions for dealing with cases of suspected fraud are carried out; and

(f) Keeping records and making periodic reports.

The States should make periodic reports to the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare on the nature and extent of the problem so that it can be kept under continuous and careful surveillance with a view to making any future administrative or legislative changes that may be indicated.

3. Allowing children to conserve income for education and employment.— Title IV of the Social Security Act provides that assistance be given only to dependent children who are in need. The existing policies make it clear that States may permit a child with income to use it to meet certain special needs without a deduction from the public assistance grant. These include costs for medical care, school expenses, extra clothing, and transportation needed for employment, etc. All of these needs for which the child's income may be used relate to something which is currently needed by the child. Not enough emphasis has been given, however, to the possibilities of recognizing certain additional needs of children that require expenses in the future for which their own income should be conserved. These needs include education, medical services, and preparation for employment. We must not stifle incentives for children to earn money that will contribute to their future independence.

The present policy should therefore be modified to permit the States to develop their own arrangements under which income of children can be dedicated to appropriate future needs without a deduction from the public assistance payment. States should be encouraged to take full advantage of the opportunities this change in policy affords.

4. Safeguarding the children in families of unmarried parents.-In about one-fifth of all ADC families a parent is unmarried. These families face serious social problems, which are of concern not only to themselves but to the entire community.

For all ADC families, but specially for this particular group of cases, receiving an assistance payment is not a complete answer. If we are going to avoid as far as possible more illegitimate births, if we are going to help these families become responsible citizens, we have to render to this category of families special services that we have seen can be effective. Providing these special services will involve the following steps in each State:

(a) Careful examination of ADC families with an unmarried parent, and of the special problems they face, to see which families are most in need of special services and which problems can best be resolved by services;

(b) Placing the selected families in caseloads sufficiently small so that effective services can be provided to them and making sure that special services are in fact rendered;

(c) Assigning to these cases staff members who are best qualified by education and experience to provide the kind of services that are needed;

(d) Increasing the frequency of home visits to these families so that those with serious social problems are seen at least once every 3 months; and (e) Coordination with the child welfare services program to assure the maximum use of child welfare staff in providing consultation and services for the special problems of these families.

Developing plans to provide these special services will require close cooperation between the States and the Federal Government. I therefore propose we proceed initially by issuing to the States within the next few weeks materials outlining these important responsibilities. This will enable the States to make an early start in coming to grips with these unusually difficult problems. Shortly thereafter we will meet with the State welfare administrators in Washington so that we can discuss with them whatever practical problems there may be in providing these special services. On the basis of this advice and the experience gained in the coming months, we can expect to issue formal policies by the middle of next year.

5. Safeguarding children in families in which the father has deserted.—A second group of ADC families where special services should be provided are those in which the father has deserted. Desertion of a parent with the accompanying evasion of family responsibility is one of the serious indicators of family breakdown in our society. The families broken by desertion are faced, in most instances, by many serious social, economic, and other problems. This is particularly true within the period just after the desertion occurs.

Therefore, in addition to the steps outlined with respect to the location of deserting fathers, the same kind of standards should be established as to the identification of such families, caseloads of limited size, the provision of services by trained personnel, and the provision for home visits at least once each 3 months, that are established for families in which the parents are not married. The procedure for developing these special services should be the same for this group of families as applies to the group discussed in paragraph 4.

6. Safeguarding children in hazardous home situations.—In addition to families in which the mother is unmarried and those in which the father has deserted, there are other family situations in which the physical and moral development of children is seriously threatened and where the home is in danger of becoming unsuitable for the children. Here preventive and protective services are clearly called for. While no single problem generally accounts for these threats to the development of chidlren into responsible citizenship, we know there is a need to identify such situations at the earliest possible moment and to afford them the best appropriate services that we are capable of providing. These families may have special problems such as money mismanagement, or may have home conditions or conduct by the parents that is likely to result in inadequate care, inadequate protection, or neglect of the children. Such families should be made a third group subject to the same standards of intensive casework service, using the best available personnel, that are established for the families whose problems arise from unmarried parents or desertion.

With respect to this third group, arrangements should also be made for including in the State plan (a) the conditions under which various protective methods will be used in making payments to such families when appropriate to the individual case; i.e., weekly and bimonthly issuance of assistance checks, use of legal representatives, and guardianship, and (b) a program for increased State and local leadership and participation in the development of community services for rehabilitation in these cases.

7. Improvement of State staff training and development programs.-The central core of proper and efficient administration is personnel-adequate in number and appropriately trained to do the job required. With the changing characteristics of the public assistance caseload, and the need to emphasize more and more the preventive and rehabilitative aspects of public welfare, the existence in each State of an adequate staff development program is imperative.

Studies show an alarming shortage, in the public assistance programs, of personnel with the necessary professional and technical training needed to deal with difficult problems such as illegitimacy, deserting fathers, and protective services for children and the aging. Federal financial participation is now available for the administration of staff development programs, including inservice training and educational leave, as part of the costs of administering public assistance. However, States vary in their present implementation of a balanced and comprehensive staff development program.

Each State should have a statewide staff development plan which would include both inservice training and opportunities for professional and technical education.

In issuing new requirements in this area we must recognize that States will need time before they can be expected to have the fully developed training program which is contemplated. Accordingly, provision should be made for permitting the various steps to be implemented gradually, starting with the requirement for the submittal of a 5-year plan and at least one full-time training position in each State agency by July 1, 1962. An annual report should be submitted by each State indicating the progress made in implementing the plan it has developed.

8. Developing services to families.-Too much emphasis has been placed on just getting an assistance check into the hands of an individual. If we are ever going to move constructively in this field, we must come to recognize that our efforts must involve a variety of helpful services, of which giving a money payment is only one, and also that the object of our efforts must be the entire family.

To emphasize these ideas the name of the Bureau of Public Assistance shall be changed to the Bureau of Family Services. This new designation will more accurately express the major emphasis in our activities and policies in the future.

9. Encouraging States and localities to provide more effective family welfare services. There shall be established within the newly designated Bureau of Family Services, as one of its major units, a division to be known as the Division of Welfare Services. This Division will give special attention to activities carried on by the States in the reduction of dependency; services to children of unmarried mothers and deserting fathers; services to families with special problems arising from financial mismanagement or mental or physical inadequacy; studies of work-relief activities and incentives to employment; and other activities of this nature which can contribute to the prevention and alleviation of dependency among aged, blind, and disabled persons, including the develop ment of more effective legislative proposals to accomplish these objectives. This new Division will absorb the functions of the former Division of Program Standards and Development; additional staff will be shifted as required to the new Division of Welfare Services in view of its new responsibilites.

10. Coordination of family and community welfare services.-In order to assure that the maximum benefits are derived from our programs for the protec tion and well-being of children carried on by the Children's Bureau and the related ADC program administered by the Bureau of Family Services, there shall be established a new position of Assistant Commissioner in the Social Security Administration. The Assistant Commissioner will give full time directing the coordination of these programs and to the development and stimulation of welfare services that will involve the resources of community organizations, both public and private, in dealing with welfare problems. This effort should give special emphasis to all services and activities contributing to the strengthening of family life.

OTHER ACTION REQUIRED

The 10 actions outlined above involve, in my judgment, the beginning of a significant reorientation of our welfare programs. In order that we may be able to have the advice and full cooperation of the States, I am extending an invitation to all State welfare administrators to meet with me and our staff here in Washington on January 29, 30, and 31. Please make the necessary arrangements for this meeting with the view of obtaining the suggestions of the State administrators for any improvements, changes, or additions.

Please arrange also for the further development by the staff of other possible changes in policy some of which have already been discussed but on which the staff work is not yet completed. I should like to have a further report on these items by not later than March 15.

(The six changes that follow were presented by Secretary Ribicoff to the State welfare administrators at the Social Security Administration conference with State administrators of public welfare on Monday, January 29, 1962.)

Today I want to discuss with you six specific areas to which we in this Department intend to devote special attention in the days ahead. We recognize that problems exist. We want to do more to solve them.

These are the six points we intend to work on:

1. We want to eliminate all unnecessary paperwork.—Our services to troubled people must expand. But the staff available to perform these services is in serious short supply. Until we have more such staff we must take every conceivable step to put what we have to the most constructive use. This effort is tangled too frequently in an administrative underbrush of forms and pieces of paper.

This is all wrong. There is too much paperwork in Government. It stifles new ideas. It eats up time. It frightens away topnotch workers; it leaves their tasks to the pedantic and unimaginative.

The social welfare worker especially must deal with people, not percentages. He cannot waste his time with irrelevant pencil pushing and envelope stuffing. He must have energy and hours to devote to those who need him.

For this reason I have directed the Commissioner of Social Security to organize a work group of technically qualified people from the States and localities to work with our Department. This group will make a determined, forthright effort to simplify and improve all our welfare forms and procedures. It will eliminate every unnecessary piece of paper that now burdens us.

Its job is clear: to see that casework no longer bows to paperwork. I am confident we can make substantial progress. I recognize, of course, that good records serve many useful purposes-not only to insure against abuses but also to provide essential information to tell us the progress our programs are making and where we must do more. But I cannot believe that every item on every form filled out by every caseworker is essential. I am sure improvements can be made, and I ask each and every one of your administrators from the 50 States to give us the benefit of your experience. I want you to review your own forms, and the Federal forms as well, and let me know which ones you believe can either be cut in length or eliminated completely without loss to the integrity of the program.

2. We are initiating more effective services for children and youth.-Our children are our investment in the future. They need help; they must have it. If they can be provided with opportunities, we must assure them these opportunities. To fail to do so is to flirt with fate-both theirs and our own. We are taking action to make all relevant social and educational services available to our Nation's children, including those on our welfare rolls.

I have directed the establishment of two staff units on youth development in the Department-one in the Children's Bureau and one in the Office of Education.

These new units will help develop local community programs to combat juvenile delinquency. However, it will be their continuing responsibility to take a broad approach to the problems of all the underprivileged youth in our land, in order to give them the maximum social, educational, and health services. In the Children's Bureau, the Youth Development Unit is being set up in the Office of the Chief. Made up of youth workers experienced in community organization and development, the staff members will be available for consultation and technical assistance to State and local welfare agencies. They will be available also to local communities in planning for improved coordination of all welfare services for special problems of youth. Thus, we hope to encourage mobilization of all possible resources in our communities into a coordinated program providing services to children and youth, particularly those on the ADC rolls.

The Youth Development Section in the Office of Education will have special responsibility for working on the school problems of children and youth with particular attention paid to those who are on the welfare rolls and to the continuing formidable problem of school dropouts. The new unit will promote better coordination between the school authorities and the welfare agencies. 3. We are intensifying our efforts to combat illegitimacy.-Disturbed by the rate of growth of illegitimacy in all segments of the society of our country, some people have jumped too easily from isolated instances to blaming the ADC program for the pattern. We know, of course, that illegitimacy accounts for 20 percent of ADC children-by no means all the children or even the majority.

But we know, too, that we urgently need more precise and penetrating information on the exact causes of illegitimacy and the most effective methods of dealing with it, if its sad increase is to be halted. I am concerned that there are many communities in which we are not applying even such resources of knowledge and skill as we have to meeting the problem of illegitimacy. Therefore, I am asking the Commissioner of Social Security to establish a work group to review existing programs, see where further study is needed, highlight the most promising areas of research, and develop programs that will help combat illegitimacy and the dependency it fosters.

4. We will increase our emphasis on research and demonstration to reduce dependency.We must know where we are succeeding and where we are falling short-which methods work and which do not-if our public welfare program is to succeed.

Progress is now being made in stimulating grants for research and demonstration projects in a number of fields. The Social Security Act authorizes such grants for projects relating to the prevention and reduction of dependency which will aid in effecting coordination of planning between public and private

welfare agencies. I wish to encourage and accelerate work in these two important areas.

Starting with a modest $350,000 in 1961, funds for cooperative research in the Social Security Administration's appropriation were doubled in 1962, and our present request in the 1963 budget will add more than another million dollars to these funds.

Child welfare funds were first made available for research or demonstration projects in 1962 in the amount of $275,000. Our request for 1963 is for $795,000. Our related program of research and demonstration in vocational rehabilitation continues to be expanded, with our request for the current year totaling $10,200,000. We are particularly eager for vocational rehabilitation and public assistance agencies to engage more widely in cooperative projects for restoring more disabled persons from the welfare rolls to employment.

However, I am concerned that we are not realizing our full potential for research in the social welfare field, and I believe that the recommendations made last year by the distinguished advisory group who reviewed the research program of the Social Security Administration provide a sound basis for further planning and action. To implement those recommendations, I have authorized the expansion of the research facilities of the Social Security Administration in order to assure continuing attention to the development and carrying out of studies in the broad field of human resources and social welfare. I have also authorized the appointment of a continuing committee on research development to help carry out our research planning responsibilities and especially to find ways to reduce dependency and to stimulate self-care and self-support.

5. We will strengthen vocational rehabilitation services for disabled recipients of public assistance.-State vocational rehabilitation agencies have been working with State and local public welfare agencies in a cooperative effort to prevent public dependency and to rehabilitate disabled people receiving public assistance. Figures for 1960 and 1961 indicate that about 16 percent of the total number rehabilitated had been receiving public assistance each year. Of the 92,500 disabled men and women rehabilitated into employment in 1961, about 15,000 were persons who had been fully or partially dependent upon public assistance. In addition, another 4 percent, or 3,700, in institutions had been supported from public funds.

Miss Switzer, the Director of the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation, shares my belief that the vocational rehabilitation program can do even more. I have asked her to establish a task force to determine what administrative steps can be taken under present laws to further expand and improve vocational rehabilitation services for disabled persons on welfare rolls. This task force is considering current policies and priorities in acceptance of disabled applicants; the opportunities for joint State training institutes for personnel of the two agencies; new uses of demonstration projects in more communities; and other specific steps to make full use of the authority and funds now available to restore more public welfare recipients to productivity and self-sufficiency.

6. We plan more effective training of public welfare personnel.-The need for more trained personnel in public welfare is obvious to all of us who are connected with the administration of the program. The President has requested in the budget $3.5 million for the fiscal year 1963 for grants to the States for a program of training in professional and technical fields relating to public assistance. This is an important item which I hope will be adopted this year. The budget estimate will permit increasing the number of trained personnel by providing for about 600 fellowships and traineeships. Provision is also made for training through short-term study groups or seminars for about 800 employees of State or local agencies.

Because of the need to train more social workers, the deans of the schools of social work have established a committee to consider ways to assist in training more social workers for public welfare. I have directed our staff to consult with this committee of deans and with State welfare agencies, so that we can assist in taking all necessary and proper means to increase the supply of adequately trained personnel for public welfare.

Secretary RIBICOFF. The administrative steps were a good beginning. We have gone as far as it is possible to go within the scope of the present law to give our welfare programs a strong push in urgently needed directions. But to achieve a truly up-to-date public welfare