New Homes for Old

by Sophonisba Preston Breckinridge

The visiting housekeepers interviewed saw many discouraging features of their work. All stated that improvement came very slowly. One worker stated that she had worked three years in her district and she had some families under care all the time, but that she was just beginning to see the results of her efforts. Others pointed out that their constant supervision was essential, that as soon as they relaxed their efforts at all the families dropped back to their old habits. There was, however, general agreement that in time, by much expenditure of effort, constant visiting, teaching, and exhorting, they did help some families to a better standard of living.

It was impossible to get an estimate from most of them as to how many families they thought they had helped, but the worker in one district said that for the three years it would not be more than five or six. Two workers who estimated the number of families with which they could work at one time, put the number at between twenty and twenty-five, and both thought that they could do much better with twenty than with twenty-five. They did not know with how many families they were working at present, but thought they were not trying to do intensive work with many more than that number.

The explanation of failure may be that not enough care was taken to make the Old-World habits of cooking and diet the starting point of instruction in the use of American foods, utensils, and diets. Such procedure would be based on sound pedagogy in starting from the known and familiar and leading to the new and unaccustomed.

However, it may be true that even after sound methods have been given a thorough trial, arduous effort still will fail to bring desired results. Case-work agencies, however efficient, may not be fitted to raise the standards of living in the homes of immigrant dependent families. It may be taken care of by other community forces and only be effected in the way that the independent family's standards are changed and improved. The task for the case worker is to help the family make the natural connections with their neighborhood and community, which are the most effective means for creating and sustaining social standards.

Certain limitations to the present work of the visiting housekeeper appear in the above discussion. These are, the lack of persons with combined training in case work, home economics, and knowledge of immigrant backgrounds, the limited number of families with whom intensive work can be done, especially if the visiting housekeeper tries to do all the work with the families she visits, the hardship to the family in the duplication of visitors if the visiting housekeeper tries to render only specialized services to a larger number of families.

Attempts have been made to overcome these limitations while still retaining the visiting housekeeper. In Cleveland the visiting housekeepers do all the work with the families assigned to them, as well as instruct the other visitors in the elementary principles of home economics and give advice on individual families, as occasion requires. Their work has been materially lightened by the adoption of a standardized budget prepared under the direction of a well-known expert in home economics. The superintendent of the Cleveland organization expressed himself as well satisfied with the work of the visiting housekeepers. It should be noted that one of the visiting housekeepers in that city not only is a skilled case worker with good training in home economics, but also is of foreign-born parentage and speaks most of the Slavic languages.

In other cities, however, notably New York and Boston, case-work agencies have given up the employment of the visiting housekeepers. In New York there is a Home Economics Bureau and in Boston a Dietetic Bureau. The organization of the two bureaus differs, but the underlying principle is the same. Both are organizations of home economics experts, who give advice to the regular case workers both as to general principles and as to individual problems. They also make studies from time to time of problems in national groups. As its name would indicate, the scope of the New York organization is wider. It takes up problems of clothing and other phases of household management as well as of food.

The advantages claimed for this plan are that the home economics experts can devote their time exclusively to their own field. The visitors are thus enabled to advise the individual families with more effect than can the specialized worker. The question as to the best way of rendering to the family under care this combination of services is by no means yet decided, and it is evident that further experiment in the various methods is necessary. They are, in fact, not mutually exclusive, and perhaps combinations of various kinds of the skill of the home economics expert, of the skilled social worker, and a generalized helper, may yet be developed.

A third task to which some agencies address themselves is that of providing educational opportunities for the immigrant family. This effort often consists first of inducing the mother herself to enter a class, and, second, of securing the attendance of the children at the public school rather than at the non-English-teaching parochial school. The difficulties in the way of securing the mothers' attendance at a class have already been described. It need only be pointed out here that the case worker who has won the mother's confidence may often persuade her to go when the stranger will fail. Where a regular allowance is given and support for a considerable period is contemplated, it has been treated as something in the nature of a scholarship or educational stipend and conditioned on the mother's fulfilling definite requirements in the way of better qualifying herself to use the allowance.

The subject of establishing connections between the members of the families and such educational opportunity has been somewhat confused by the fact that the case-work agency often depends upon the settlement to supply certain recreational facilities for the children in the families, and there is a temptation to use the settlement club or class rather than the school for the mother.