4. In evaluating its testimony, the point of view of the individual agency must be considered and allowed for. Other things being equal, that type of social experience which is least like our own is most valuable-the agency developed on the neighborhood unit helps most the one that regards the family as its unit of measure, etc. If there has been a complete change of management in an agency, it is important to know, in each instance, whether its case report refers to work done before or after the change.

5. A systematic and confidential exchange of identifying information among social agencies assures better diagnosis and treatment, promotes better understanding between agencies, reduces duplication of effort, and increases the sense of individual responsibility for work undertaken.

6. Prompt consultation of the exchange is essential, however, and a prompt following up of the clues which it supplies.

7. The order in which the social agency clues so followed up should be consulted depends upon a number of factors; but, in general, the first thing to seek is assurance that the entrance of our own agency into a given case would not duplicate effort or interfere with the treatment of some other agency; second, when this first point has been settled, history useful in our own diagnosis; third, co-operation in treatment.

8. Additional investigation is not necessarily a duplication of effort, but overinquiry will best be done away with by a high and widely accepted standard of diagnosis.

9. Communication between social practitioners should be direct and not through their clients or other intermediaries.

O

CHAPTER XVII

LETTERS, TELEPHONE MESSAGES, ETC.

UR review of outside sources is ended, but before leaving this part of our subject for an analysis of the last stage of

all in the processes leading to diagnosis, there are certain things to be said about the various means of communication with outside sources and the relative uses to which these means may be put. Of the statements procured by different means, which ones (other things being equal) are most satisfactory-those that are (a) written replies to the questions on a form or schedule, (b) written replies to letters, (c) telephone replies to questions asked by telephone, (d) telegraphic replies to inquiries made through the same medium or (e) replies by word of mouth secured in the course of a personal interview? Many other combinations of these means are possible, of course, but taking these five main forms of communication without their variations, from which one, on the whole, does the social case worker win the best results? The personal interview has become his main reliance. There are exceptions to this, but to an increasing degree it is true in most forms of case work.

Oral testimony fails us when accuracy is vital, as in matters of time, place, amount, etc., but so does written testimony, unless we seek the original documents. The distinguishing characteristic of social evidence is not, however, its handling of objective matters, but its ability to evaluate human relations. It is justified as a separate type of evidence by its possible usefulness in gauging the interest, capacity, and whole atmosphere and spirit of the individual witness, including his capacity to become more interested than he now is. In subjective matters such as these there is no satisfactory substitute for the personal interview.

A policeman wrote from a small town to an associated charities secretary about a family in which the husband was very abusive. After giving certain information, 1 See Chapter XIII, Documentary Sources.

he added, "If I could see you, I could say many things which I think it would be just as well not to write, for the reason that the explanation would take a lot of time and paper and then perhaps would not be very satisfactory-you know how it is."

A woman probation officer was asked to inquire into the story of a young girl arrested for immoral conduct who gave the name of Emily Burton. The girl said that she came from the town of G——, about sixty miles away, and that her people were French Canadians and Catholics. Her name seemed unmistakably AngloSaxon, but she persisted that she had no other, so the probation officer decided to go herself to G—, and follow personally the very slender clues that were in her hand. First, she saw the police captain there, and interested him to assign an officer to accompany her on her search, but the girl's parents could not be found at the address given or anywhere in that street or neighborhood. School records revealed nothing, nor could the parish priest identify the family from the description. The mill in which the girl claimed to have worked was the next to the last clue, but it yielded nothing. Returning to the captain of police, the probation officer told him of a brother George who worked for a farmer (or so the girl claimed), but the only George known at police headquarters who worked for a farmer was named Lodie, and the probation officer did not even attempt to see him.

On the day of the trial, and just before it began, the girl begged hard for mercy, but the probation officer was forced to point out in all kindness that she did not even know who she was. Whereupon the girl said that her name was Lodie and that she really did live in G. The identification of this one name more than justified what had seemed a futile journey, for it gave promise that there was further truth in the girl's story. A second visit to G brought to light five respectable brothers and sisters, with four of whom the officer was able to consult. This led to plans of co-operation with the girl's mother, to the return home of the wanderer, who had been denied a welcome earlier and to plans for her continuous supervision under suspended sentence.

Where such serious issues are involved as in the case just cited, it is no unusual thing, now, for case workers to travel from one end of a state to another or into other states to make an inquiry in person. At one time this would have been regarded as a very wasteful procedure, but much footless endeavor-expensive in time and money, and expensive in its results-has been saved by such journeys.

I. BLANK FORMS

Many charitable institutions still select their inmates on the basis of statements filled out on application blanks, to which are appended certain letters of endorsement. The formality of these blanks is believed to secure greater accuracy in the replies. Where inaccurate replies are a statutory offense, punishable by fine or imprisonment, there may be justification for this view, but such

powers seldom reside in social agencies, either public or private, and where they do they are not always used. The logically arranged and categorically framed questions of an application blank suggest the answer that will lead to the decision desired by the applicant. This is the chief objection; another is that no formal set of questions, however full, can cover all possible contingencies; a blank may be carefully and accurately filled out by a witness and yet omit important items. As regards the letters of endorsement which usually accompany such applications,1 written by merchants, teachers, clergymen, doctors, and other presumably responsible persons, these are too often found to be not worth the paper upon which they are written, as some of the cases cited in this volume show.2

II. LETTERS OF INQUIRY

The author's examination of case records indicates greater advances during the last decade in the art of conducting personal interviews than in the art of letter writing. This is natural, perhaps, for the attempt to make social diagnosis a more flexible and understanding thing has been pushed forward under many disadvantages, of which time pressure, public impatience, and inadequate preparation are only a few. Under these handicaps the substitution of visits for letters has diverted attention from the possibilities of letters in those cases, still numerous, in which they should be used. As a result, many of the carbon copies of letters found in case records have the air of having been written or dictated in a most perfunctory and absent-minded way.

A case worker's letters, in so far as they relate to diagnosis, fall into the two large groups of those that ask information about clients and those that give information. Those that ask information may be divided into letters that ask it of the witnesses direct and letters that ask it of intermediaries who are requested to see the witnesses or to communicate with them in some other way. Again, letters that ask information direct may be divided into those that ask it of persons near enough at hand to make a personal interview with them later quite easy or at least possible, and those in which 1 Some institutions and agencies provide a form of recommendation requiring nothing but the signature of the endorser.

2 See, for example, pp. 232 and 241.

the opportunity for such direct communication later is remote or non-existent. Obviously, each one of these divisions and subdivisions demands from the letter writer a somewhat different method of presentation, though attention will be given here almost exclusively to letters of out-of-town inquiry and their replies.

In respect of letters of inquiry (to take this half of the subject first) the question that precedes every other is (1) What other means of communication, at command, would serve the purpose better? This settled in favor of the letter, as the best available means, the next question is (2) Have the preliminary inquiries that would make the writing of this letter the logical next step all been made? And (3) Has the definite relation of the part of the inquiry to be covered by the letter to the whole of diagnosis and treatment been thought out by the inquirer as clearly as it can be at this early stage? Only when this has been done can be found the answer to the next question, which is (4) Has the best possible correspondent been chosen for the particular information or the particular service desired? (5) If so, what method of presentation will most interest him, and so win the information or the service? (6) How, for instance, can the trouble to which he will be put by the inquiry be justly measured, and every effort be made to anticipate his difficulties and give him the details that will help him to overcome them? (7) If the correspondent is not personally known, as often happens, what circumstances of his occupation, experience, education, and of his relation to this particular problem should be borne in mind and turned to account in the attempt to make the significance and possibilities of the inquiry clear to him? Each of these questions deserves amplification.

1. Should the Letter Be Written at All? The advantages of a personal interview have been made clear. When letters are the sole means of communication with persons who do not understand the case worker's point of view or whose attitude and characteristics are unknown to him, his work is seriously handicapped from the beginning. Some letters are merely preliminary to an interview; others follow it, to secure in black and white data of a technical or of a purely objective nature, in which accuracy is

1 Many hospitals refuse to give a diagnosis unless written application is made for it.