task which is easily understood and easily explained tends to become limited in scope-to ignore the relation, for instance, between health questions and economic questions, between questions of child welfare and those of family responsibility. Short tasks of any kind seem, on their face, to make thorough diagnosis an unnecessary preliminary. Much of our social work is so cut up and subdivided at present that it drifts into rapid-fire, hit-or-miss forms of treatment. If the nature of a particular form of service makes a careful definition of the client's social difficulties seem impertinent, there is always a chance that the details of its program are in need of revision, that it should operate in a smaller territory or attempt to benefit fewer people and really cover the ground.1

2. The Origin of the Application. (a) The client comes in person to the social agency of his own initiative; (b) or with a letter of reference from some individual or organization, or with an oral statement that he has been so referred; (c) someone acting in his individual capacity or as representative of an organization comes personally, instead, in the client's interest; (d) or sends his request through the mail or by telephone. Thus we find our First Interview modified at the very start not only by the nature of our own interest but by the way in which it is evoked. If the client visits us, whether of his own initiative or otherwise, our program varies somewhat from that following a request to visit him. If individual citizens or organizations in some way concerned for his welfare make the request, we have one advantage in that a possible outside source of insight and co-operation is available from the very beginning.

3. The Place of the Interview. The place in which the First Interview is held depends in part upon the nature of the task and its origin, but not wholly upon these. Societies dealing with questions of family relief and, in these later days, with family rebuilding have changed their policy several times with regard to the place of the interview. Following the line of least resistance, the older type of worker usually conducted First Interviews at his office desk, with record form before him and pen in hand. He asked each question in the order indicated by the items on the form, and

1 Another excuse often given for hasty preliminary inquiry is the probability that the case will be transferred to another social agency for treatment. See Chapter XVI, Social Agencies as Sources, on the advisability of thorough diagnosis before transfer, p. 313.

filled in a short summary of the perfunctory reply before going on to the next: Assistance asked? "Coal and groceries." Cause of need? "Out of work." Any relatives able to assist? "No."

As a reaction against this stupid compiling of misleading items, many American case workers have abandoned the office interview, except in emergencies and in dealing with the homeless. It is their practice to take only time enough, when application is made at the office, to assure themselves that treatment is probably needed, and then promptly to make a visit to the home, where, in an unhurried talk, the basis is laid for further acquaintance.

The arguments in favor of holding the First Interview in the home instead of in the office are, in family work, (a) Its challenge to the case worker at the outset to establish a human relation, at the risk, if he fail, of coming away without the simplest and most elementary data. In the office, clients are on the defensive and justify their visits by their replies. In the home, the social worker is on the defensive; the host and hostess are at their ease. (b) Its avoidance of the need of so many questions, some of which are answered unasked by the communicative hostess and by her surroundings. To the quiet observer the photographs on the wall, the framed certificates of membership in fraternal orders, the pensioner's war relics, the Sunday school books, the household arrangements are all eloquent. And far more revealing than these material items are the apparent relations of the members of the household to one another-the whole atmosphere of the home. (c) Its provision of natural openings for a frank exchange of experiences. "The great facts of birth and death alone are sufficient to make the whole world kin," and these and the universally interesting comparison of diseases form a good basis for that kind of informal intercourse which belongs to the fireside. Then, if some of the children are present for a part of the time at least, there is a good chance for comparing notes about brothers and sisters, their ages, names, namesakes, etc. (d) Its further emphasis upon the personal side when there has been no visit by the client to an office, but when his situation has been reported there instead by others; its relegation of official paraphernalia and attitudes, in such instances at least, to the rear.

1 See Miss M. L. Birtwell's pamphlet on Investigation.

A few years ago these arguments in favor of the home interview would have been regarded as inadequately offset by the counterarguments of greater convenience, accuracy, and saving of time in the office interview. But now a certain number of social workers, even some of those specializing in family work, are beginning to feel that there is much to be said in favor of the office interview, if properly conducted. They assume that the one who conducts it will later visit the home, that there will be no lesion at this important point through a division of the task between two workers. The return to the older method is a return with a differencea return with office equipment which assures entire and uninterrupted privacy, ample time, no herding of waiting clients, and no record form or other bit of officialism in the foreground.1

Inquiry as to current practice in other forms of social work shows interesting variations. The general secretary of a society to protect children from cruelty feels that it is most important to see the home environment before making any inquiries outside. The agent of a public department for dependent children finds that clients come to the office of the department braced and tense. She urges that only a clerk see them, and that the First Interview be held in their own surroundings. On the other hand, a charity organization worker tells of stolid Bohemian housewives who pay little attention to visitors at their homes, continuing their housework so unconcernedly during an entire interview that it is impossible to make any real progress. The strongest evidence in favor of the office interview comes from the medical-social group. One of these, who was formerly a district secretary of a charity organization society, furnishes the following memorandum:

The hospital social worker always has a good straightforward introduction to the patient in the perfectly definite request or inquiry made by the doctor: "In

"We have found," Mrs. Chesley of the Paine Fund writes in the Survey for May 22, 1909, "that the best place to obtain this knowledge [of the client's point of view] has been in the privacy and seclusion of the little room of the Parish House which the committee uses for an office. Of course, applicants are seen in their homes, often many times, but people are much more self-conscious in their homes, especially if we go as strangers and our visit is unexpected. In the majority of homes we are never free from interruptions from children or neighbors, and we can never be quite sure that there is not someone in the next room listening to all we say."

The statement as to self-consciousness may be open to question, but the lack of privacy in many crowded city neighborhoods is undoubtedly a real difficulty.

struction in hygiene," "sanitarium care," "light work," "medicines don't help, what is the trouble at home?" "help in buying brace, $9," etc. The patient can almost without exception see the connection between the worker's questions and this definite object. Hence he is not suspicious or puzzled, and you are freed from any temptation to indirectness, subterfuge, concealment or ambiguity, into which you might drift in spite of yourself while striving to help a poor person referred by somebody "who does not wish his name used," or who thinks the poor family "so proud and sensitive that they must never know the associated charities is called in," or by that wealthy relative who would like to help but "does not wish the poor cousins to know where the money comes from." Such situations seem to me to involve positive deception. I know they have entangled more than one C. O. S. worker, and it seems to me that a definite stand should be taken and a way out found, as the final results of such work can only be an injury to all concerned.

In the hospital no such situation can possibly arise-you can proceed by the shortest and most direct route to the matter in hand. The air is clear, and you can look your patient straight in the eyes and say, perhaps, "The doctor naturally can't stop to discuss with you how you are going to get this expensive brace, but if you will explain to me just how you are situated, we will talk over possible plans." This leads quite naturally to a businesslike discussion of income and expenses and resources of all kinds, without any "fishing for facts." As a result, (a) the first interview takes place at the hospital; (b) the introduction is easy and the approach to the immediate problem direct and businesslike; (c) extended explanation is sometimes needed to make the patient see the relation of the interview to his recoverythis is done frankly and seldom fails. (I recall only two cases of failure in the year and a half I have been at the hospital.) (d) The co-operation of the patient in revealing his story is pretty sure.

Two medical-social workers suggest one exception in favor of the home interview. Deaf patients often come to the social service department from the clinical examination too sick and tired to stand another long interview. If questioned at all, they must be questioned so loudly that they become conscious of being overheard and are too embarrassed by this to talk freely. In such cases only those statements are taken which are needed to identify the patient in the confidential or social service exchange, and the First Interview is held in the home.

Some interviews are best held on neutral ground, as at a settlement or some other neighborhood center. A children's worker describes a painful interview with a domestic who had applied to have her child boarded out, held in the front room of the house in which she was at service. It happened to be a doctor's office, and she was so fearful of the return of the doctor that it was im1 For description see Chapter XVI, Social Agencies as Sources, p. 303 sq.

possible to get her to talk freely. The interview should have been postponed to some other time and place.

It would seem, to sum up, that wherever the sense of strangeness may be worn away most quickly, wherever a good understanding with our client may be established most easily, is the right place for the first long talk; and whether this place be the home or the office must depend upon conditions which vary with locality, with the nature of the work to be undertaken, and with the temperament and equipment of the worker. The preoccupation of the client with the immediate crisis is one of the things to be avoided in the choice of a place; no conditions should interfere with our efforts to lead his mind back to the events that will reveal the deeperseated difficulties of his life, and forward to the possible ways out. In so far as the home and its familiar objects suggest the more normal aspects of his life, they are a great help. Some places in their very nature emphasize the crisis—a court room does, or the waiting room of a busy relief bureau. This emphasis is a barrier between case worker and client.

4. The Recorded Experience Available as a Starting Point. It will save the client's time and assure him better service to discover at once whether he has ever before been a client of the social agency now about to take up his application. For a dozen reasons-the fact that the agency has offices in different parts of the city, has removed its offices, has changed its workers, or is one of a number of organizations doing similar work-he will not always be able to answer this question correctly; sometimes he may not wish to do so; but data enough to settle whether he or other members of his immediate family are already known should be procured before the full interview with him gets under way. Action can be taken more promptly and intelligently and many preliminaries be dispensed with, if the earlier record, should there be one, is consulted without a moment's delay.

If the client makes his application in person, this is easily done. At the very beginning of talk with him, first names of his immediate family, ages of children, present address, and former addresses (if the last removal was recent) can be had, and these will enable a clerk to find the previous record, if any, in the office files. It