Most of the agencies that have tried foreign-speaking visitors feel
that in spite of these disadvantages it is a gain to the agency to
have such visitors on the staff. This is especially true with those
agencies that have or have had visitors with educational equipment
that is comparable with that of most of their English-speaking
visitors. One agency, for example, has only one foreign-born visitor,
a Russian who speaks several languages and had a teacher's-training
course in Russia. The superintendent reports her "gratifyingly
successful in her work with foreign families."
The Charity Organization Society in another city is divided in opinion
about the foreign-born visitor. During the panic of 1914-15 they had a
Russian man who had had a good technical education at the University
of St. Petersburg, and two years in a medical school in this country.
The assistant case supervisor of that organization reports that he not
only accomplished a great deal with the unemployed men in the
district, but also helped the district workers to understand the
Russian, Slavic, Lithuanian, and Bohemian families in the district,
and "demonstrated what the possibilities might be if we could have
foreign-speaking people with requisite training and the proper spirit
to work intensively with the families." On the other hand, the
superintendent of this organization, who was not with them in 1915,
says that their experience with foreign-born case workers has not been
successful, and suggests as an alternative the instruction of American
case workers in foreign languages.
The New York society agrees that better results are obtained by having
native-born case workers learn the language of the group with which
they are to work. They have found it possible to have native-born
workers learn Italian, and have found them better workers than any
Italians they have employed who were people of less background and
training.
STANDARDS OF LIVING
Secondly, there is the problem of building up in the family asking and
receiving aid, domestic standards appropriate to the life in the
community. This raises, first, the question of the responsibility of
the case-work agency for the adjustment of the family life to such
standards in household management and in child care as might be
formulated on the basis of expert knowledge of community needs;
secondly, the question as to ways in which such adjustment may be
accomplished if the agency feels under an obligation to undertake it.
A number of the thirty-three case-work agencies which discussed this
subject indicated that they thought this task one that should not be
assumed by the case-work agency. Four agencies said they were doing
nothing in this direction, though one of these was looking forward to
the employment of a visiting housekeeper. One agency said that there
was no difference in this respect between the care of native born and
foreign born, and that all families were given such instruction as
occasion demanded.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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