If social work is ever to develop
into a profession, searching analysis and criticism of methods and
results, no matter what the consequences may be, become prime essentials.
On October 1, 1913, the Boston Children’s Aid Society added
a research worker to its staff; the expense of her work for the
first two years being met from a special gift coming from one of
the directors. This director, and others of the board and staff,
were anxious to have the society study in a broadly interpretive
way some of the economic and social problems represented in the
lives of the children coming to its attention. There was also a
desire to see if our particular services as a child-placing society
could not be stated in certain exact terms, with the hope that in
so doing we might be able to establish certain standards by which
we could measure our own work, and which might be of some service
to other children’s organizations, also inclined to self study.
We hope to publish in greater detail certain portions of the study
which are only slightly covered in this paper.
Moreover, in this process of measuring our own standards there
was a still further desire to see wherein we were failing in our
work; for social agencies do frequently fail: often because their
professional technique is crude or faulty, and often because no
methods short of a fundamental change in social institutions will
correct the unsocial conditions so often found. A quick reporting
of faulty lines of approach to better social conditions is something
that society at large has a right to expect from every social agency,
and this can only be done through careful interpretation of the
work as it progresses. . . .
To our great surprise and disappointment we found in 1913, after
superficial examination, that our histories as written records were
of little value; that, although they represented many evidences
of good and bad work, there were too few facts on which sound, wise
studies could be based. The task, moreover, of getting supplemental
data was, of course, entirely out of the question, for a number
of reasons—chiefly that of expense.
Most social agencies are prone to indulge in this same bromide,
namely, that, given sufficient money, they could do so much in an
educational way with their old history records. We do not feel that
we are exaggerating when we say that it is perhaps possible to rattle
off on the fingers of one hand the children’s organizations,
and the family treatment organizations as well, scattered over the
country, whose records have any general social value whatsoever.