The Art of Helping People Out of Trouble/Introduction
The purpose of this book is to describe a method of helping people out of trouble. The principles underlying this method are applicable, not only when one is with an individual whose personal affairs are at a crisis, but whenever one finds himself so placed that he may influence other people—whether as parent, teacher, employer, or neighbor, whether with patient, parishioner, friend, or client.
It is a method both old and new, old in that its point of view toward life and many of its processes has been appreciated and used by understanding men and women since human beings first began to live and work together, new in that not until recent years has a sustained and directed effort to cultivate it been made.
This effort is being carried on by social workers and is inspired by their experience in meeting the perplexities and difficulties of the people who seek their help in clinics and hospitals, in schools and courts, in children's and family welfare or charity organization societies, and in many other institutions.
The method that has thus been developed has come to be known as social case work. The practice of it as applied to the more complicated forms of trouble is a vocation requiring, in addition to native ability, special knowledge and much preparation and training. There are many situations, however, in which this method may be of help to any one who can sympathetically interpret its spirit and its principles. Social case workers, having found it effective in the lives of those whom they serve and in their own lives also, believe that its point of view should form part of the philosophy of everybody and that an understanding of its processes would be useful in the daily relationships of life and particularly to those persons to whom other people turn for advice and guidance. It is in the interest of a wider application of social case work that this book has been written.
Social case work is not a panacea. While it can be helpful to any one in any economic or social status, it is not a cure of economic and social evils. Although an interpretation of it as universally applicable obviously avoids emphasis upon any one group of people, it must be remembered that where economic and social conditions are adverse, as they are for thousands of human beings, all the problems of life are aggravated, trouble is induced where trouble might otherwise be avoided, and its treatment is rendered vastly more difficult. The present discussion holds it to be axiomatic that only as environment and the organization of society improve can men and women hope to reach their fullest self-expression.
In illustrating the principles of social case work, I have made frequent use of incidents and crises that have arisen in human lives. Names and other identifying details have been changed. I hope that these stories will not lead the reader to think that the helping of people out of trouble is an instant and easy process. It is difficult, a matter usually of months and years, with many failures. Even some of the experiences which here appear to be successes were later followed by disaster, for just as a man may recover from one disease only to succumb to another, so, too, an individual, after overcoming one difficulty, may be overwhelmed by the next, or, as not infrequently happens, he may suffer from nervous and mental instabilities that prevent any permanent solution of his problems. Again and again the person who helps, and the person who is helped, struggle through mistake after mistake to achieve but a modicum of what they had hoped. Yet, despite all this there are successes, successes that more than justify faith in social case work as a method of helping people out of trouble, and as a key to the secret of a happier association with our fellows.
In the preparation of this book I have been helped by many persons, but particularly by my associates in the Philadelphia Society for Organizing Charity. Their insight and understanding, their experience and their skill are the inspiration of much that appears in the pages which follow.