Problem Families: An Experiment in Social Rehabilitation
- Author:
Tom Stephens. Foreword oy
Seebohm Rowntree. Pacifist Service UnitsPp. 72. Price 2s. 6d.
This study of the problem of the socially subnormal family comes appropriately at a time when the State is about to introduce the most comprehensive health and social security measures yet known in this countryWill these measures automatically wipe out this ” problen1 family ” in our midst ? The answer that it will not is implied in this Report, for as the writers say, the peculiar characteristic of these families is their inability ” to make the best of their circumstances and to profit by the facilities and services which are available to them ‘ ? For this group of people, then, improved social services are no guarantee of a raising in their standard of living* since they do not respond automatically. The problem is a moral as well as a material one. These are the families well known to every family case worker It is & familiar picture?the squalor, the border-line mental deficiency, the apathy; and above all the absence of any standards of conduct, the absence even of discontent. The book sets out in the first place to give an account of a small sample of such families situated in Liverpool) with a view to discovering whether they have any common characteristic, and whether it is possible to diagnose causes; and in the second place to record the experimental methods adopted by a team of people, the Pacifist Service Units, in attempting to see whether rehabilitation could be brought about by intensive case-work methodsby friendliness, by practical help, with a small group of such cases.
The Report courageously recognizes not only the extent to which these methods succeeded, but also the extent to which they appeared to result in no sustained improvement in the family.
Where such failure occurs it is attributed to a combination of the unresponsiveness of the material, and to the inability of the social worker to find the right method of approach in a particular case, to awaken that response. The fact that they succeeded at all with such unpromising material and in the face of such difficulties is a tribute to the quality of the workers in the Pacifist Service Units and to their equipment, and to their willingness to undertake manual work in the homes they visited as a part of their technique.
This is an honest sensitive picture, drawn with sympathy and insight, of a small group in one provincial city. There is every reason to suppose that a similar group of families could be found in most of the large communities throughout the country. They are, as was said in ” Our Towns?A Close-Up “, ” a menace to the community of which the gravity is out of all proportion to their numbers “. It is a problem which will have to be tackled by Local Authorities and social workers everywhere. This report underlines some of the problems to be overcome; it stresses the importance of beginning with the fullest understanding of the fundamental problem of the family as a unit, and for social diagnosis before treatment. It is a recognition of the tenet that without the active co-operation of the client, true rehabilitation can never be achieved. It is above all a compelling plea that this work for the rehabilitation of problem families is of a highly specialized nature calling for the highest qualities in the social Worker; it can never be achieved unless the deeper spiritual resources of the worker and the person he wishes to help are called into play. J.M.R.
Disclaimer
The historical material in this project falls into one of three categories for clearances and permissions:
Material currently under copyright, made available with a Creative Commons license chosen by the publisher.
Material that is in the public domain
Material identified by the Welcome Trust as an Orphan Work, made available with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
While we are in the process of adding metadata to the articles, please check the article at its original source for specific copyrights.