W CHAPTER VI THE FIRST INTERVIEW 'E TURN now to the details of social case work method. It will be necessary to remember that in any art the description of its processes is necessarily far more clumsy than are the processes themselves. In the last analysis, moreover, the practitioner of an art must discover the heart of the whole matter for himself—it is of the essence of art that he shall win his way to this personal revelation; but an intimate knowledge of the successes and failures, the experiences and points of view of his fellow practitioners will be found to be essential too. The thirteen chapters that follow attempt to analyze the experiences of case workers in their daily use of the four processes which lead to social diagnosis. These four processes are (1) the first full interview with a client, (2) the early contacts with his immediate family, (3) the search for further insight and for sources of needed co-operation outside his immediate family, (4) the careful weighing in their relation to one another of the separate items of evidence thus gathered and their interpretation. By interpretation is meant the attempt to derive from all the evidence as exact a definition as possible of the client's social difficulties-the act of interpretation is the act of diagnosis. It cannot be assumed that any one of these processes is always completed before another begins. When the First Interview is held in the client's home, contacts with the family often overlap. our first contact with the client. As soon as we have two statements instead of one, whether these come from the family or from outside sources, we begin to reason about them, to compare them, and to draw certain tentative inferences from them. Nevertheless there are these four processes, distinguishable despite their interplay. Many social workers are of the opinion that the most difficult and important is the first-the initial interview. Probably this is the part of the diagnostician's task in which personality, as contrasted with technique, counts for the most, for here he should establish some basis of mutual understanding and get some clues to the evidence which will shape his judgment later. "I am more and more convinced," wrote the secretary of a large family agency years ago in a personal letter, "that the finished skill of a good social worker is most shown in this first visit or interview. No knowledge of general principles, no cleverness in gaining cooperation, no virtues in the worker, and no committee, however wise, can make up for want of skill in gaining quickly the confidence of the family, and getting the foundation for all good work to follow." Though this emphasis is usually justified, it has two possible dangers: It may discourage us, when ground has been lost in the First Interview or not gained, from pushing forward to win the needed understanding later. It may betray us, on the other hand, into resting back upon the outcome of an apparently satisfactory first statement and failing to put forth our best endeavors in the further necessary steps. 1. MODIFYING CIRCUMSTANCES Among the circumstances which must modify everything said about First Interviews, four groups are important enough to be kept always in mind: these are circumstances relating to (1) the nature of the task, (2) the origin of the application, (3) the place of the interview, and (4) the recorded experience available as a starting point. To clear the ground for consideration of scope and method these must take precedence. 1. The Nature of the Task. The form of service to be undertaken can be interpreted narrowly or broadly, of course, but in either case a number of variations of method are traceable to the nature of the particular case worker's task. If an agent of a society to protect children from cruelty knows that he may be cross-examined by the lawyer for the defense as to what took place in his First Interview with the defendant, inevitably this will modify his mode of approach, for he must be able to testify, upon occasion, to the exact form of his questions. Or if, to take another kind of service, a probation officer is known to come from the court and to represent it, certain conditions, favorable and the reverse, are created by this fact; the officer has more authority but less freedom than a social worker who lacks the court background. He often finds it difficult to lead the minds of those directly concerned in a court case away from the immediate to the wider issues. A worker who was formerly with a charity organization society and then became the agent of a state department for the care of children found it much harder to get information in her second capacity than in her first. People applied to her for a perfectly definite object, namely, to have their children taken by the public; they were tremendously on their guard against giving information that would be likely to interfere with that object. On the other hand, the agent of a private charity known to control a large relief fund finds his interviews hampered by this fact at every turn. The immediate material benefit looms large; the other beneficent functions of the organization and the steps taken to carry them out are little understood or are even thrust aside with impatience.2 The hospital and the school furnish admirable means of approach for social work; people like to talk about their ailments and about their children. Both have this disadvantage, however, that the 1A former probation officer writes, "Conversation that had to do with the offender was easy; talk that would go deeper into the family situation taxed ingenuity and tact." 2 "On my first movements through the poorest parish in Glasgow, I was thronged by urgencies innumerable, because of my official connexion with the secular charities of the place, and which did invest me with the character of an almoner in the eyes of the general population. What I judged and apprehended as the consequence of this was, that it would neutralise the influence which I wanted to have as a Christian minister. I saw that this would vitiate my influence among them. I felt that it would never do if I were to go among them, first as a dispenser of temporal good things, and then as urging upon them the things which make for their everlasting peace. I felt the want of compatibility between the two objects, and, rather than defeat my primary object, I determined to cut my connexion with the city charities and I will not forget the instant effect of this proceeding when it came to be understood-the complete exemption which it gave me from the claims and competitions of a whole host of aspirants who crowded around me for a share in the dispensations of some one or other benevolent trust or endowment of other days; and yet the cordial welcomes I continued to meet with when, after I had shaken loose of all these, I was received and recognised by the people on the simple footing of their Christian friend, who took cognisance of their souls, and gave himself chiefly to do with the scholarship of their young, and the religious state of their sick, and their aged and their dying."-Chalmers on Charity, p. 154 sq. |