iemeti a Magazine Section
SOCIAL WORKER REVEALS DISGRACEFUL CONDITIONS

Socreds must be made to act
on shocking welfare situation

Recently a social worker from Prince George, Mrs. Bridget Moran,
shocked the province with a letter to Premier Bennett outlining the
rrible conditions existing among social welfare services in B.C. Her
ction has aroused the people of B.C. as never before to the need for
astic action by the present legislature.

wide

The article on this page was written by a social worker who has had
experience in different parts of the provinee. She here outlines some

of the problems and concludes: “It is the duty of all to force a complacent

Sovernment to take action.”
By B.C. SOCIAL WORKER

Ys. Bridget Moran of Prince
George has brought to light
4 long-standing situation that is
4 disgrace to our society. She
has dropped a pebble of truth
into the dark waters and ripples
ave spread to’a troubled shore.
If they fade into nathingness, YOU
are to blame. It is the duty of
Us all to stir these ripples into
& tidal wave of indignation, and
force a complacent government

to take action,
ee have had our fill of stat-
pec of graphs and commiss-
S. As long as we accept the
Palliative of worn-out aphorisms
a will continue to live in a
€r-never land of empty pro-

_ Mises,
hee Department of Social Wel-
$ +e hroughout the province, has
5 €s in basements, old build-
8S and make-shift arrange-
Ments,

uae is a reflection of the
— thinking in the capital.
aN - is spent where it shows—
relat doesn’t ‘*show’’ in human
Onships, It has been main-

a and proved, that with
ate a
incial staff the cost of prov:

aan Welfare can be reduced
erably.
ye Sop of an out-moded
- subst is not even a decent
. itute for a living wage — and
mn Nothing at all towards
ing the cause of preventing
Leola of the condition of
3 bate Our present system
ie eres to promote deter-
lation. despondency, and hum-
Welfare family that lives ‘‘on
Shieh degenerates by force
ration aes from one gen-
comin, to another, each one be-
pore apathetic and frus-

tre

trated than the one before. And
each generation of dependents
costing more to the taxpayers
than the equivalent staff would
do to begin to eliminaté the
causes and effect of a gradual
cure,

This is the crux of the whole
matter, It is our responsibility
to ensure that this session of
Parliament does not neglect its
promises,

The province needs more
social workers, more local re-
sources decentralized into the
areas remote from the large
treatment centres, more comm-
unity participation in foster home
care and prevention of juvenile
delinquency.

Child welfare

The greatest immediate needs
are treatment centres for emot-
ionally disturbed children. The
resources that are available are
admirable, but their capacity is
so limited that workers in the
field face problems daily for
which they are not properly
equipped. Emotionally-disturbed
children are a most upsetting
influence in a family — their
own or foster family. They need
expert handling and guidance,
which the average social worker
tries to provide from experience
and common sense — not always
successfully.

If there were specially trained
foster parents whom these child-
ren could be placed, the cost
of training these parents would
be saved in a short time in
the prevention of juvenile de-
linquency and its cost among
untreated cases, Clinics for men-
tal health should be available to
adequately investigate a course
of action in these cases. As it

t

ties not of their making,

Videq "4

orm Scho.

€Ssar
to the vy

ai Fained supervision,

Miser)

Present day costs."’

Action Proposed
by B.C. Communists

Ne following is from the brief recently presented to the B.C.
fare. Etament by the Communist Party dealing with social wel-
“Phe Pies of the brief were sent to all MLA’s.
irst and most important thing which must be evolved in
- Social welfare is a policy based on morality and res-

to bce. assistance is viewed by the government as sustenance
. who are inferior, lazy and shiftless, therefore requiring
baseq Be work job as assistance. A new policy is essential
Casua) eee understanding that people who are in need of help are
Fiftioy) Of the society we live in and are not able to surmount
be

ey alous situation exists with regard to the service pro-
Shunte, he unfortunate children of this province. Many are
Tom one foster home to another. Some are kept in re-
Honally d Ols because of inadequate suitable accomodation. Emo-
isturbed children do not receive proper treatment. It is
to establish more receiving homes and make available

fess Were-must be an immediate upward adjustment. . . from
a Sum families now receive on social assistance. We
“AN ai © allowances be increased by one-third.

®wances for old-age, disabled and blind be adjusted up-

Co)
S ne vide more adequate welfare services more social work-
Ssential, with salaries that correspond with responsi-

is, by the time a social worker
has prepared the necessary mat-
erial for a clinic, he is as well
aware of the problems as the

experts — but after the clinic
he still does not know what to
do about it . . . There just isn’t

time to explain. There are too
many cases, too short a visit
at the clinic — and the travelling
clinics add one more frustration
to the social worker’s load.

If there were a province-wide
foster home program similar to
‘adoptions so that the full benefit
of the total resources in this
field could be utilized with a
minimum of red-tape and petty
possessive jealousies — then
children from all regions could
be placed in the most suitable
homes, instead of emergency
placements that often break down
and result in endless moves and
heartbreak for the child,

If there were probation officers
cum-school counsellors so that
pre-delinquent children could be
treated in time to prevent de-
linquency. School *‘dropouts’’ and
delinquency are closely related
The prevention of one would help
considerably to. cure the other.
In this field, too, more planning
for the non-academic school child
should be implemented. A large
number of the ‘‘dropouts’”’ are
the direct result of boredom —
surely a concerted effort tocom-
bat this condition would be worthy
of, say, one Bomarc.

Retarded children are a con-
tinuous problem in the home, the
school and the community. Much
progress has been made in the
care of these dependent children,
but the resources again are pit-
ifully inadequate compared tothe
need. Tranquille is a splendid
experiment — but it is under-
staffed. The situation at Wood-
land’s school is shameful. Staff-
shortages have a root cause and
this the government could well
eliminate. The problem is not
diminishing. It must be faced and
the sooner the better.

‘he report of the social welfare department, tabledin the Leg-
islature recently for the year ended last March gave these
revealing facts:

@ There were 80,339 social welfare cases in B.C., an increase
over the previous year of over 200.

@ There were 28,793 getting welfare allowances. Pensioners
on welfare supplements were 29,628.

@ The number of child welfare cases went up from 7,362 to
8,139.

@ During the year 52 social workers left the government ser-
vice, reflecting widespread disatisfaction. The report admits:

**We are still faced with the problem of heavy staff turnover and
lack of trained workers."*

@ In the year under review, despite the heavy increase in wel-
fare cases, the total staff increase was only 19 over the previous
year. (From 249 to 268).

@ An example of the problem is seen by the figures recently
released on the Prince George area. In this area the case load
went up 16.2 percent inthe nine months before Jan. 31, 1963. Child
welfare cases went up 16 percent, and social welfare allowance

cases up 26.2 percent.

Family service and
social assistance

Family service is afield which
stems directly from the economic
insecurity of unemployment, al-
cholism and emotional instab-
ility. More time on the part of
the social worker could result
in a better course of treatment
and the prevention of broken
homes, desertion, delinquency.
Prevention here is, however, the
key to the situation.

The Social Assistance field is
one that could stand a great deal
of revision — with emphasis on

.the‘‘vision.’’ At present, muddled
as it is with the Unemployment
Insurance Commission, it is only
a stop-gap between jobs and/or
starvation. It was never meant
to supply more thanthe minimum
of economic aid, but — is this
justifiable? Are we perpetuating
a social disease by dabbing on
a bit of ointment now and then?
Could we not make better use
of the taxpayer’s hard-earned,
easy-spent money?

The social assistance recipient
can be classified in two basic
categories — the unemployed em-
ployable and the unemployable.
There will always be, in our
society, a percentage ofthe latter
group, Some of these are tech-
nically ‘‘employable’’ but chron-
ically unemployed. This is a
burden which society must
accept,

But the other group? This the
majority of the labor force pot-
ential that is for various reasons
out of work.

Jobs Needed

We are all familiar with offic-
ial statistics and the juggling of
figures to make a pretty picture,
These people — all of them —
constitute the graphs. But they
are, nevertheless, human ele-
ments and as such they do not
respond too well to numerical
platitudes. Their needs are real
and urgent and worthy of con-
sideration. P

There is no easy answer, but
no answer at all is disastrous.

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Nazi exposures
rock Bonn gov’t

The exposure in the last few days of

two former Nazis holding top posts in
the West German government has
shaken Bonn and sent a shiver through
the world.
_ This week the top West German
security official, Ewald Peters, who
accompanied Chancellor. Erhardt on his
recent visit to Washington and London,
was exposed as a war criminal respon-
sible for a ‘‘special’’? Nazi squad which
carried out mass killings of Jews in
Russia during World War 2.

after his arrest Peters

committed suicide.

On the left is a photostat of the pers-
onnel file of Dr. Hans Krueger taken
from Nazi records and exposed by the
East German government.
proves him to be a die-hard Nazi
whose backing of Hitler dates back to
participation in the Hitler putsch in

The file

Krueger was the Refugee Minister
in the Bonn government, and has been
charged by the East German gov-
ernment with sentencing victims to
death while head of a spec;

ia
in Poland. < a

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