viduals in the same group, mean that further inquiry is needed to reveal motives and facts which will reconcile statements either by change or by elimination. The need of further inquiry is also indicated, usually, when the evidence all points in one direction without contradiction or inconsistency, but when also the sum of it reveals no single possible next step in treatment that promises to be useful. This arrival at no thoroughfare may be due to other causes, such as lack of imagination and resource in those responsible for taking the next step, but one cause of failure when we find ourselves at this pass is a serious and unsuspected gap in the investigation itself. We must recognize in contradictory evidence and in a total of evidence that reveals no plan of action, the need of further inquiry.

The foregoing seven principles of choice in deciding the order of our consultations with Outside Sources hardly deserve to be styled principles, perhaps, but from the evidence now at hand it is believed that they will have practical value for the case worker.

III. METHOD

"Just after visiting a home you come out tingling with the letters you want to write, the telephoning you want to do, the visits you wish to make to other parts of the city, but by the time you get back to the office, after making visits on one or two other cases, all this has oozed out through your fingertips, somehow. But to systematize what you got in your first visit, to conserve the feeling you had when you left the house and put it right into action, is the only way to get results." This comes from a case worker who was at the head of a busy district office in which there were often nine or ten assistants. It suggests the loss of power and of efficiency which follows a division of work at this point, especially when the division is carelessly adjusted. A new assistant in a large relief office was not a little disconcerted when he was given a memorandum of eight "references" whom he was to see about a certain client and his family, without any information as to the problem or so much as a glimpse of the case record. A division of labor is possible, even in so delicate a process as arriving at a social diagnosis, but it seldom comes without dislocation at this early stage. After the most important clues have been followed up by the one

who has seen the client and his family, it is often possible to utilize assistance for visits to minor sources, though even here a full knowledge of all the preceding steps is essential before attempting to pay these additional visits.

A good deal will be said in a later chapter about communications by letter and by telephone.1 Let it suffice here to say that evidence given face to face and eye to eye is evidence weighed and sifted by a subtle process that can never be applied to letters, blank forms, or telephone messages. The witness of application blanks is notoriously untrustworthy. An examination of the records of an orphan asylum which formerly based all its admission decisions upon the answers filled out upon such blanks reveals astonishing misstatements from presumably responsible public officials and from tradesmen, teachers, and relatives. There would seem to be something very demoralizing about a blank form.2 Letters addressed "to whom it may concern" are almost as bad; so are letters of recommendation of all kinds. People sometimes say quite unblushingly, when asked by a social agency why they wrote this glowing letter about a certain weakling, "Well, I hoped you'd do something for him." When seen personally, they soon realize that the situation is not nearly so simple as all this, and are led on, by one who quickly grasps their point of view, to think more deeply and testify more truthfully. The personal interview, whenever it can be obtained without irritating an overbusy person, is the best method of approach.

seen.

All of our clues can be quite perfunctorily followed up, however, even when each source is personally, carefully, and exhaustively The unimaginative worker, the "overworked victim of routine," can go through all the motions without achieving anything but irritation and disorganization. We must have a generous conception of what can and should be done, and some time in which to do it, before these outside informants can be made to contribute either useful information or friendly service. The worker with no such generous conceptions and purposes takes just as long to go and just as long to come back, his carfares and shoe leather

1 Chapter XVII, Letters, Telephone Messages, etc.

2 An exception to this is in the filling out of those public documents for misstatements in which a penalty is attached by law.

are just as expensive, and he is pretty sure to discover that nobody can do anything, that all the persons consulted know very little, and are chary of imparting that little to him. "In these records,” wrote a director of one charity organization society who had been asked to criticize some of the case histories of another, "when the investigation is really begun, there seems to be a greater endeavor to get at facts than to get advice as to what to do; they give the impression of clerical interviews for information rather than a considering together and a securing of co-operation from all the persons interested." This result is not always due to perfunctoriness and lack of enthusiasm. It sometimes comes from an enthusiastic interest in our own plans and purposes. We are so full of them that we never give the other person a chance to help in forming them.

"One of the axioms of social diagnosis is that if a source is worth consulting at all, it is worth consulting in the right way." Many of the things that have been said about the method of a first interview apply to interviews with the family group and to these visits paid to Outside Sources also. We must give the one interviewed ample time in which to develop his point of view; must not suggest the answers to our questions; must utilize to the full all new avenues of approach and all natural openings, instead of shaping the interview to meet some preconceived idea of its content; and yet must keep the goal of a fuller knowledge and wider co-operation always in view.

We progress, in these inquiries, toward the point at which we can feel justified in assembling all our data and making a social diagnosis. Examination of our material as a whole is, in fact, the most neglected of all the diagnostic processes, but its consideration here will have to be postponed until the various groups of Outside Sources have been reviewed. Meanwhile, we must not forget that the reasoning processes come into play as soon as the first interview with a client opens1 and are needed also in every consultation with an Outside Source. At the time of each such consultation and between the different ones, we must be comparing, reconciling, contrasting every statement with every other, and seeking to fill those gaps in the evidence which have a direct bearing upon the main 1 See p. 120 and Chapter V, Inferences.

issue and its solution. A conception of the different kinds of evidence described in Chapter III, and of the characteristics, detailed in Chapter IV, of human beings as witnesses, should enter into and shape all these contacts with Outside Sources.

SUMMARY OF THIS CHAPTER

1. A client's social relations are not bounded by his immediate family, nor, as a rule, should our sources of insight and co-operation be so bounded.

2. A study of the Outside Sources-sources outside the immediate family group, that is consulted in three cities by 56 social agencies of 19 different types (rendering 14 different forms of service in the cases studied) shows in 2,800 cases (50 for each agency) 10,871 consultations with such sources, counting, in any one case, only the first consultation with each source used.

3. The groups of Outside Sources frequently used, as shown in this study, are social agencies and churches, doctors and health agencies, former and present neighborhoods, relatives, former and present employers, schools, friends, and public records.

4. The following seven principles may govern choice in deciding the order in which Outside Sources should be consulted, though such accidental things as distance, accessibility, and need of unusually prompt action, will undoubtedly modify their use.

(1) Strike out boldly for history.

(2) Seek first those sources that are likely to be rich in history only, and seek later those most likely to be rich also in co-operation.

(3) Seek out the witnesses who have been able to make first-hand observations in preference to those whose information is at second-hand. (4) Recognize the special value of supplementary clues-of clues, that is, to sources of information not revealed in the first interview or in subsequent ones with the family group, but which come to light in the course of inquiry. (5) Think of sources in groups, and tap each group for a new set of experiences. (6) Distinguish groups all of whose members are likely to see eye to eye, and in which consultation with one source may possibly suffice, from those in which there is likely to be diverse experience within the group.

(7) Recognize in contradictory evidence, and in a total of evidence that reveals no plan of action, the need of further inquiry.

5. Consultations with Outside Sources are best held by the one who has conducted the first interview with a client and seen his family.

6. Evidence given face to face and eye to eye is weighed and sifted by a subtle process that can never be applied to letters, blank forms, or telephone messages.

A

CHAPTER IX

RELATIVES AS SOURCES

S BETWEEN the different forms of social case work, it will be seen that, in the first city (where such comparisons could be most safely made), the suburban and the city charity organization society consulted with 35 and 36 Relatives respectively in their 50 cases each, the general private relief society with 39, the public outdoor relief department with 42, the society to protect children from cruelty with 51, the city and state departments for care of children with 68 and 44 respectively, three child-placing agencies with 89, 44, and 48 respectively, a reform school with 26, a children's institution with 20, a day nursery with 29, and three hospital social service departments with 11, 6, and 23 respectively.1 Relatives were seldom consulted by the juvenile court, but in most forms of children's work, in family work, and in medical-social work (though here in a less degree) the figures show frequent consultations.2

What does the reading of case records and the evidence of case workers, in so far as it has been possible to collect this in many interviews with them, show as to Relatives? Clients often do not want their Relatives seen. Why is this, and what mistakes of the social worker may justify, at least in part, this position? More and more social workers are seeking out Relatives, though more and more they are discovering their bias, and the need of sifting their evidence with great care. Just what is gained in accuracy 1 Appendix II, Table B.

2 It must be remembered that only the Relatives outside the immediate family group were counted in the outside sources study. The use of the word Relatives in this chapter is subject to the same limitation but to no other, for it here indicates relationship by birth, by marriage, or by descent. Brothers and sisters living at home are counted as members of the family under treatment; if living away from the family, they are classified as Relatives. A client's kindred and his wife's kindred are regarded here as his and her Relatives, though the distinction between connection by marriage and connection by descent or birth is an important one to make in our consultations.