How Many Social Services Are In Chicago

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Social Services

The term "social service" (or social welfare) refers to the multifariousness of programs made available by public or private agencies to individuals and families who need special assistance. Prior to the 1920s, Americans referred to these services as clemency or relief, but they covered a broad range of services, including legal aid, immigrant assistance, and travelers' aid. The new terminology corresponded to changes in the philosophy, approach, and organization of social piece of work.

DuPage County Almshouse, c. 1911

For most of our country'due south history, the social and economical insecurities that accompanied old age, unemployment, disability, desertion, or death of the family unit wage earner had to be met by the family or local efforts. Religious and fraternal organizations, along with individual and public welfare organizations, provided minimal forms of help. Economically advantaged families purchased private insurance, and workers' families joined mutual do good or aid societies for the death benefits they provided. The starting time major expansion in public provision came in the years between the American Revolution and Reconstruction, when state governments built asylums and almshouses for dependent and runaway children, the disabled, and the mentally sick. Counties built poorhouses for the aged, infirm, and poor. The asylum motion did not replace but evolved concurrently with voluntary societies formed to aid a diversity of constituents, including former slaves, the mentally sick, widows, immigrants, and juvenile delinquents.

"Care of the Immigrant," c.1911

By the 1890s, progressive social workers and industrial reformers introduced new ideas about social survey research, equitable access to social resources, and rights of social citizenship into the debates on social provision. They challenged the traditional perspective of a limited country as they developed plans for social insurance and expanded municipal services. Crucial to the widespread influence of these new ideas were the national organizations and their state affiliates that generated support for new legislation and policies. Groups equally diverse every bit the National Briefing of Corrections and Charities and the National Consumers League made the transition more feasible. By the 1920s, testify of this new approach to social services could be found in newly legislated programs like workmen's bounty and mothers' assist programs; an expanded governmental infrastructure including juvenile courts and social service divisions; and greater coordinated benefits between public and private groups.

The Great Depression's economic crises led to a shift in Americans' ideas well-nigh authorities responsibility for economical security. The New Deal infused federal funds into programs that affected banks as well as farmers, investors, and industrial workers. The Social Security Human action of 1935 created a federal arrangement of provision for the aged, unemployed, and categorically poor, funded past an employees' contributory tax. The U.S. social insurance organisation divided benefits between entitlements to workers in covered jobs and categorical aid (welfare) to those in uncovered sectors or unable to work. States retained considerable control over the expenditure of funds and administration of services for the categorical welfare programs. Historians generally agree that the infusion of federal funds through the New Bargain programs averted a prolonged economic decline only did not pull the state out of the Depression. That credit goes to the war industry jobs that started at the cease of the 1930s and in the first years of the 1940s.

The federal regime connected to promote economic and social stability for a broad range of Americans following Globe War 2. Employment policies for returning veterans, low mortgage interest rates, and subsidies for national highways contributed to the era's economical expansion. Cold War politics provided a new rationale for civil rights laws and economical opportunity policies. Presidents Kennedy and Johnson cultivated this arroyo most specifically with their pedagogy and antipoverty programs. Like the programs that proceeded them, the new services sought to meliorate social issues created in role past economical and social inequality.

Chicago's development of social services fits prominently within the larger national trends. Public and private charities contributed to Chicago's early on social services, but the individual societies held the dominant role until Progressive-era programs altered the balance. Chicago's oldest and largest private charity, the Chicago Relief and Aid Order (CRAS), founded in 1857, considered its mission to assist the "worthy poor." That service base broadened past necessity when the 1871 burn down destroyed many homes and left thousands helpless. The city of Chicago selected this established group to distribute approximately $5 million in donations, but it appeared that the CRAS might lose its autonomy in the button to coordinate the commitment of services. The business revived in 1887 when the CRAS annexed Chicago's commencement charity organization society, simply it managed to retain its autonomy by resisting efforts by charity arrangement societies to coordinate resources and investigate charity cases.

Chicago's social services comprised both public and individual resources at the plough of the twentieth century. Public facilities included the Cook County Hospital, the Juvenile Court, the Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium, the County Amanuensis's Poor Relief Department, and the Dunning institutions (amidst them the poorhouse). Nearly of the poorhouse residents came from the ranks of the anile, the seasonally employed, and single mothers with young children. District poor relief offices dispensed "outdoor relief" to the badly destitute in the form of bags of coal, baskets of groceries, and exceptional stipends. During severe economic downturns, the city of Chicago opened temporary boardinghouses for unemployed men. These usually had auxiliary "employment bureaus" and forest yards where boarders worked off their stay.

Privately organized agencies provided a multitude of other services, such as homes for the aged, unwed mothers, orphans, working girls, and abased or dependent children. Child health services, kindergartens, and twenty-four hours nurseries received their earliest support from private organizations. However, the bulk of private charities provided services merely to a specific religious or ethnic grouping.

Proponents of a reformed and coordinated system of social services, including Jane Addams ( Hull Business firm settlement), Lucy Flower (Chicago Woman'south Order), Charles Henderson (professor of sociology, University of Chicago ), Julia Lathrop (first director of the U.Due south. Children's Bureau), and Julius Rosenwald (philanthropist) worked with others to found a new organisation called the Central Relief Association, renamed the Agency of Charities in 1894. This association took charge of relief efforts during the depression of 1893 and had x districts with 800 friendly visitors providing services in Chicago past 1897. In addition to a register of clients for better-coordinated services, the bureau broadened those information technology served through programs such as day nurseries, lending libraries, dental dispensaries, kindergartens, and a loan fund. In 1909, the Bureau of Charities joined with the Relief and Aid Society to class the United Charities of Chicago.

Betwixt the 1890s and 1930, new ideas most the cause of poverty changed the substance and structure of social services in Chicago. Private and public charities continued to serve selective populations, but support for a wider range of publicly funded social programs gained prominence nationally and locally. The city's universities and settlement houses formed the heart of the new initiatives. Charles Henderson led early investigations with his University of Chicago sociology students. He collaborated in social research projects with Graham Taylor at Chicago Commons, Mary McDowell at University of Chicago Settlement, and Jane Addams at Hull House. New methods of social investigation such as social surveys and statistical analysis produced new explanations for the causes of poverty, equally social researchers investigated the relationships between environment, family construction, and local politics on one'south chances for economic and social opportunity. Although aristocracy ideals of noblesse oblige and behavior in individual failing as the cause of poverty would even so remain, they competed in a new environment.

Some participants recognized the limits of the clemency ideal of self-help after taking part in social investigations. Lathrop's research on county public charities for an 1893 federal study of urban slums led her to criticize sharply the county'due south poor relief office. Robert Hunter, some other resident of Hull House, wrote Poverty, his treatise on the structural dynamics of economics, in 1904, shortly after his tenure as the organizational secretary for Chicago's Board of Charities.

The systematic analysis of social bug demanded specialized grooming for social workers. Settlement leaders believed that a coordinated course of report that involved students in methods of social investigation offered a significant improvement over the irregular training of settlement workers, friendly visitors, and poor relief investigators. Reformers from the settlements and the community joined with academics at the University of Chicago to develop a program of study in social piece of work. Taylor gave the starting time series of lectures as early as 1895. The program expanded rapidly when Henderson, Lathrop, and Hunter also contributed lectures. Within a few years, students could take a program in social enquiry at the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy. The school's Department of Social Investigation directed by Edith Abbott and Sophonisba Breckinridge, conducted the earliest social investigations of the Juvenile Court and trained African American social workers through the Wendell Phillips settlement. The Schoolhouse of Civics and Philanthropy joined the University of Chicago every bit the School of Social Service Administration in 1920 and connected the tradition of using scientific inquiry to inform social piece of work practice.

The justification for social provision began to change as well. One component of progressive reform sought to use country authority to decentralize the economical power of monopolies and to create greater admission for Americans to the economical and social benefits of democratic commercialism. This created an opening for those reformers who wanted to expand individual rights to include government responsibility for and protection of citizens, specifically workers, immigrants, women, African Americans, and children. Reforms such as protective labor legislation, mothers' pensions, and child labor laws came out of this context and had early on successes in Illinois considering of the effective leadership of Chicago reformers.

African American residents of Chicago used public social services to the extent possible, but de facto residential segregation and pervasive racism remained a persistent obstacle. The African American community created numerous institutions to serve individual and family unit needs. Of dozens of local programs, the best funded were Provident Infirmary, the Urban League, and the YMCA. The Wendell Phillips and Frederick Douglass settlement houses offered customs services within their neighborhoods as well equally social work preparation. Ida B. Wells founded the Negro Fellowship League in 1910 every bit a resource for young men. A network of women'due south clubs, churches, and mutual assist societies raised funds for the Phyllis Wheatley Home, day nurseries, and homes for dependent children. However, the customs's difficulty securing funds eventually fabricated information technology difficult to maintain community control. The Urban League, formed in 1916, provided the first coordinated services to African Americans in Chicago and began to involve white philanthropists like Julius Rosenwald in the support of programs. The organization identified itself as a vehicle to create opportunities (usually meaning self-aid through employment) for men and women and distanced itself from any charitable activity.

1 significant issue of the new directions taken in social services during the Progressive era tin be plant in the expansion of the public infrastructure for services. Chicago'due south initiation of a juvenile court in 1899—the first in the nation—offered an early example of the changes ahead. The Chicago Woman's Club drafted a juvenile court law in 1895, merely questions of constitutionality stalled it before information technology reached the legislature. By 1898, a coalition of women's clubs, charities, lawyers, and kid welfare advocates submitted a new nib and saw it through the legislature. In 1911, the court system expanded again to accommodate two new programs, for mother-only families. The Cook County Municipal Court opened a new Courtroom of Domestic Relations. Two-thirds of the cases heard involved abandonment and nonsupport of women and children. The court defined its purpose as a clearinghouse to receive complaints, detect responsible parties, retrieve and disburse back up funds, and refer families to appropriate agencies. The Juvenile Court besides initiated a new branch to administer the new mothers' pension police force that year. The court's estimate recognized the social service aspects of the police force and included representatives of the social work community in the organizational plan. The mothers' alimony division had its own director, investigators, and staff.

The era'south changes led to a greater degree of planned and coordinated services. Several Chicago agencies had been associated with the state conference of Charities and Corrections since the 1890s, only the caste of expansion and modify created boosted layers of collaboration at the local level. In 1914 the Chicago City Council approved the creation of a Department of Public Welfare to behave social research. The Welfare Council of Metropolitan Chicago, formerly the Chicago Council of Social Agencies, founded in 1914 by representatives of public and individual agencies to anticipate needed reforms and coordinate research on issues, served as the liaison between local government, business organisation, and philanthropic communities.

By the late 1920s, signs of economic dislocation appeared amongst Chicago's near vulnerable workers. Layoffs, first experienced past African Americans and Mexican Americans, increased the need for temporary relief services. Unemployed transient men once once again drew attention to the need for lodging houses. Although Chicago'southward settlements continued to provide social services to their neighbors, Hull House and Chicago Commons adjusted their services to address besides the needs of Mexican Americans and African Americans, whose numbers increased in the city during the 1920s and 1930s. During the wintertime of 1932–33, approximately xl percent of the labor strength in Chicago had no piece of work. The network of public and private agencies tried to respond, but local efforts in Chicago were overwhelmed by demand. Past 1933, federal public works programs started to mitigate the crisis by employing the unemployed on edifice projects. This infusion of federal funds staved off a deeper low.

The influence of individual Chicagoans in Progressive-era social services and planning extended over several decades and beyond city and state borders. The economical crises of the 1930s and the expansion of the federal hierarchy with New Deal programs brought many Chicago reformers to Washington DC. Charles Merriam began the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) shortly afterward his failed 1919 mayoral campaign. The SSRC organized the Commission on Recent Social Trends with the intent to blueprint a national program for evolution. The Depression and Franklin Delano Roosevelt's defeat of Herbert Hoover derailed Merriam's strategy, but only temporarily. Merriam'due south campaign manager for the Chicago mayoral race, Harold Ickes, became Roosevelt's secretary of the interior. He appointed Merriam to the National Planning Board. More specific to social services, Chicago reformers served on committees that would write the Social Security Act. Grace Abbott, past director of the U.Due south. Children'due south Bureau, served on the Advisory Council to the Committee on Economical Security and developed the child welfare provisions. Edith Abbott served on the advisory committee on public employment and public help.

The postwar economic system created greater prosperity in employment and consumption for many Americans, and Chicago continued to concenter those seeking work. It was a major destination for African Americans who left the South during and afterwards the war also equally Mexican Americans who had begun migrating to Chicago in substantial numbers during 1920s. Nonetheless, the expansion left behind many Americans. The elderly, mother-but families, the chronically ill, and racial minorities had disproportionate rates of poverty. Lyndon B. Johnson'south Great Society programs focused on creating equality of opportunity through federal initiatives in health, education, and welfare. Programs for the aged, including Medicare, created a powerful "senior" lobby and made this component of the welfare land difficult to challenge. In contrast to the popularity of Medicare, the War on Poverty programs that intended to improve education, employment, housing, and health care in areas of concentrated poverty received a hostile reception from voters and local politicians.

Chicago's feel with Great Social club programs varied. Politicians gladly accepted the federal funding attached to employment, housing, and model cities programs without sharing in the greater social goals to create opportunities for economic mobility. But federal officials never developed the country and local support of elected officials necessary for the successful implementation of programs. At the end of the twentieth century, new social problems emerged equally a result of transitions in the postindustrial economy, stagnant or failing wages, drug trafficking, and a wellness care system in crunch. At the time that the country needed new solutions for these crises, support for government spending on social services declined precipitously and voluntarism increasingly filled the gap. The election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency in 1980 signaled a national groundswell of support for limited authorities spending and a plough away from the previous 2 decades of enlarged social programs. No political entity escaped these efforts to dismantle the welfare state. In Chicago and elsewhere, cutbacks in public funding resulted in a pass up in some services and programs, an increment in nonprofit provision of services and in philanthropy, and greater state and local determination-making on the use of federal matching funds. The public and individual collaboration that divers social services at the beginning of the century connected at the stop of the century, every bit local governments contracted with individual agencies to support numerous social services.

Bibliography

Abbott, Grace. From Relief to Social Security: The Evolution of the New Public Welfare Services and Their Assistants. 1941.

Cook County, IL, Lath of County Commissioners. Charity Service Reports. 1910–1927.

Patterson, James T. America's Struggle confronting Poverty, 1900–1985. 1981.

The Electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago © 2005 Chicago Historical Society.
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