VIII. Bookkeeping and Registration Notes. The statement is axiomatic that the most effective workers should be at the places of greatest congestion. When a large relief problem is to be met these will usually be the bookkeeping and registration departments. It should be re-emphasized that in these two departments the very best help should be searched for. In the registration work the Rehabilitation Committee was fortunate in securing a number of library clerks for indexing. The system of filing correspondence was not uniform. Some of the secretaries, however, as the case records were in folders consecutively numbered, adopted the satisfactory plan of keeping an index of the persons written to, together with the number of the cases written about. In order to make possible a rapid separation of replies to letters there should be a centralization of correspondence. Under the section system this was not necessary, owing to the fact that letters were sent out with the addresses of the section offices, to which replies naturally went. Possibly the only centralization necessary would have been to keep a complete index of the names of persons written to, which would have required the various secretaries to send to some one person a duplicate card, giving the name of the correspondent and the case number.
The Rehabilitation Committee’s experience proves that the authority to give the numbers for the case records should be in one place, so that confusion through the duplicating of numbers may be avoided. The rigid standards of the best charity organization societies are none too rigid, when one realizes that while such a society may deal within a year with from 2000 to 6000 families, a committee such as the Rehabilitation Committee might have to deal with over 25,000. Another most important consideration is the need of impressing workers with an appreciation of the value of records and of the call for absolute accuracy. It should be realized that care with records does not mean red tape or loss of time, but added efficiency. It means not only less worry for the workers themselves, but quicker meeting of the needs of individual families. Every minute spent in hunting for a lost record or endeavoring to supply an omitted entry, means a minute more of delay to a number of other families. These minutes grow astonishingly large in number, so that by and by they may be computed in days. Not only were there such delays at times, but it became occasionally necessary to reprove workers who had on their own responsibility made changes in the records. In some cases, for instance, the names of members of particular families were changed, without the knowledge of anyone except the worker involved. As a worker close to the Relief Survey has well said, “There is constant need of impressing the sacredness of a record upon those who use it.”
12
GENERAL PLAN OF HOUSING COMMITTEE
The following plan for handling applications for cottages to be built by contractors was followed in the main by Committee V:
1. Original requests were to be received by mail only and references were to be consulted by mail; but in reality many persons came to the office to file their applications.
2. When this work was finished and the case indexed the application was placed before the Housing Committee for:
a. Such further investigation as it deemed necessary.
b. Action by Committee.
3. When the Committee decided to make a grant, directions showing the kind of house to be built, the amount to be paid to the contractor, and the amount of the instalments to be paid by the applicant, were written on a slip and attached to the application.