Finally, it is more clearly recognized than formerly that the time to "close the case" is not just after the man's return.
A case supervisor speaks of "the strong temptation to close our records as soon as relief becomes unnecessary. The man's return to the family is often the critical point at which there is need of skilful and sympathetic friendship. These cases cry out for continued treatment. We need to think more humanely about all the unsettling elements in our urban civilization and to see that all the nice individual adjustments that as case workers we can make are made. If the man's work gives him no opportunity for self-expression, what attempt are we making to give him such opportunities outside his work, to connect him with a trade union, with clubs and with fraternities? How much are we thinking about cures for inebriates, psychoanalysis, vocational guidance, recreation?"
Briefly, then, changes in the social worker's attitude toward treatment have meant less emphasis on punitive and repressive measures, more consideration of the man's point of view, less tendency to press court action, at least in the beginning, fewer commitments of children, a more liberal relief policy (partly as a preventive of "forced reconciliations"), and lastly, longer supervision after the man has resumed support of his family.
[15] Adapted from the writer's article on "Desertion and Non-Support in Family Case Work," _The Annals of the Academy of Political and Social Science_, May, 1918, p. 98.
[16] Breed, Mary: Eleventh New York State Conference, 1910, p. 76.
A few years ago a young Jewish woman reported to the National Desertion Bureau[17] that her husband had left her and their children.
The couple had never got on well, and the man seemed to have been a melancholy and impractical fellow. The usual methods of the Bureau brought no results in finding the missing husband. Then the wife was more carefully questioned, and urged to tell all that she could recall or had heard about her husband's early life, his tastes and peculiarities. Among other things the Bureau learned that the man's father had died in America years ago, having come here to make a home for the family left behind in Russia. The boy had grown up in ignorance of the place of his father's death and burial, and, as the eldest son, he felt it his duty to find his father's grave. Filled with this idea he came to America as soon as he was grown and landed in New York, but his few poor clues availed him little against the difficulties of poverty and a new and complex environment. In the end he gave up the search, married, and settled down on the east side. After the sudden quarrel which led to his leaving home, his wife thought it possible that his old obsession might have reawakened. The Bureau, supplied with the clues in question, had little difficulty in discovering the father's burial place in St. Louis; and the cemetery authorities promised to send word if the missing husband should appear. Sure enough, a short time afterward he arrived, and, after visiting the grave, returned, not unwillingly, and took up his family duties again under the supervision of a probation officer.