The social settlement, which shares with public recreation centers the functions of providing for the social life and recreation of immigrant communities, is confronted by many of the same problems, often rendered the more difficult from the fact that it is usually regarded as even more alien to the life of the group than the park, and its purposes are less understood. Members of Polish, Lithuanian, Italian, and Ukrainian groups, who have expressed their own appreciation of the aims of the social settlement, and the highest personal regard for settlement residents whom they have known, believe that the "American" settlement can never reach the masses of people most in need of the type of service it offers. Repression under autocratic government in Europe and exploitation in America have made them suspicious, and they are apt to avoid whatever they cannot understand.
It is believed that these types of service, undertaken with a more thorough knowledge of the point of view of the immigrant and with the indorsement and co-operation of recognized leaders of the groups to be served, would much more nearly meet the needs of the people least able to adjust themselves to the new situations.
IX
FAMILY CASE WORK
The discussion up to this point has dealt with the family which has not fallen into distress. It has been confined to problems of adjustment. But there are numerous families which fall into distress and need the services of the social case-work agency. Because of limitations of space and because the principles applying to their care and treatment apply to other kinds of service, the following discussion will treat only of agencies concerned with the care of immigrant families in need of material aid. Of the 8,529 families cared for by the Cook County agent, 6,226 were from the foreign groups, and of the 569 under care by the Cook County Juvenile Court in its Funds to Parents' Department, 386 were foreign born.[72]
Attention is called, however, to the fact that the special application to the care of foreign-born families of the principles supposed to guide the conduct of good agencies in their care of any family calls for the elaboration of much more skillful devices and for much more extensive and closely knit organization than has yet been developed. This chapter deals only with these special applications of general case-work principles.
The principles of care in any case of need are: (1) That such care shall be based on adequate understanding of the immediate individual problem; (2) that it shall be adapted to the special need; (3) that it shall look toward the restoration of the family to its normal status; and (4) that treatment, whether in the form of relief or service, shall be accompanied by friendly and educational supervision and co-operation.
These are no simple tasks when the family is English speaking, native born, and when no particular difficulties arise from difference in language and in general domestic and social habits. With the non-English-speaking family, the agency is faced with difficulties at each of these points. There is first the problem of getting at the facts as to the nature and extent of the distress and the occasion of the family breakdown.