Voluntary Agencies in the Prevention of Destitution in United Kingdom
The Sphere of Voluntary Agencies in the Prevention of Destitution and the Majority Report of the Royal Commission of 1905-1909
In this issue about the sphere of voluntary agencies in the prevention of destitution, the book “English Poor Law Policy” [1] reads as follows: Both the Majority Report and the Minority Report lay stress on the importance of enlisting the assistance of voluntary agencies and private charity in the task of dealing with destitution. Both schemes of reform allot a large and important sphere to these auxiliaries. But there is the widest possible difference, both in principle and in practicable applications, between the two proposals.
To the Majority what seems desirable is that the army of destitute persons needing assistance should be divided into two classes-those who can best be helped by private charity, and those for whom public assistance is most appropriate. These two classes should, it is asserted, be kept, from the outset, wholly separate, to be dealt with by two vertically co-ordinate authorities-the Public Assistance Committee, an official body, dispensing public funds, and the Voluntary Aid Committee, made up of voluntary charitable workers, dispensing private funds. Certain classes of applicants for assistance who come for the first time are to be required, whether they wish it or not, to be assigned to the Voluntary Aid Committee, which is to be free to deal with the cases as it chooses. Those only whom it refuses to aid, or refuses to continue to aid, are to be relegated to the Public Assistance Committee, which is to be bound to make its aid in some way “less eligible” than that which the Voluntary Aid Committee would have given.
The explanation of this remarkable proposal, with its assumed separation of the poor into what we may not unfairly call the sheep and the goats, lies in the fact that it is to private charity, organised in the Voluntary Aid Committee, that the Majority Commissioners look for what they call “preventive work.” But this is to use the word “preventive” as meaning, not in the least what the Minority Commissioners mean by that term, but merely the saving of selected persons from the stigma of pauperism and from the assumedly unsatisfactory method of treatment by the Public Authority. This difference in the use of the word “prevent” runs through all the arguments and proposals of the two Reports, and explains many of the divergencies between their specific recommendations. When the word “prevention” is used in the Majority Report it nearly always means the prevention of pauperism; whenever it is used in the Minority Report it invariably means the prevention of destitution.
The Minority Commissioners dissent emphatically from the proposal to separate the poor into two classes, and to free the Public Authority from all responsibility for the treatment of the one, whilst excluding the voluntary workers from all share in the treatment of the other. Such a proposal has, among other objectionable features, the cardinal defect that it obscures the importance, and actually stands in the way of any effective measures for preventing the occurrence of destitution. It is always possible for Voluntary Agencies to save selected persons from pauperism; but such Agencies can seldom do anything to prevent, even in these selected persons, the occurrence of destitution. When a phthisical man, unable any longer to earn wages, is so far brought low as to apply for assistance, the Voluntary Aid Committee may help him to live, may procure him medical advice, may gain him admission to a Voluntary Sanatorium, if a vacancy can be found; and may, eventually, help his already infected family to bury him. But all this is “Early Victorian” in its conception. It belongs to the time when sickness had to be accepted as the “Visitation of God.” The Voluntary Aid Committee, in thus preventing that man from becoming a pauper, will have done nothing towards preventing the destitution with which he has already been smitten before he comes to them, and will have accomplished nothing towards saving others from succumbing in the same way. The destitution in this case might have been prevented if the Local Health Authority had pursued more energetically its campaign against preventable sickness; if it had so improved the environment as to bring sunshine and fresh air into the working-class street, and insisted on good sanitation of the dwelling-house; if it had “searched out” the case, so as to discover it long before application was made, when the disease was still in its incipient stage, before destitution had set in, and before the rest of the family was infected; if the patient had, at this early stage, been, by a short sojourn in the Municipal Infirmary, effectively taught how to live; if his home had then been kept under systematic observation; and if the National Labour Exchange had found him suitable outdoor employment. But these things are out of the reach of Voluntary Agencies, as they are beyond the ken of any Destitution Authority.
The Minority Commissioners assign to Voluntary Agencies quite a different sphere of activity-one, indeed, which the more progressive among them have already claimed as their own. The time has gone by when we can separate the poor into two classes, so as to confine the assistance of the Voluntary Agencies to one only of these classes, the smaller of the two, and so as to restrict their work to the relief of a destitution which has already occurred, instead of the more hopeful task of helping to prevent the very occurrence of destitution, by arresting its several causes. It is impossible in the twentieth century for the Local Authority to part with its responsibility as regards any of the inhabitants of its district; but, on the other hand, it is coming more and more clearly to be seen that it is impracticable for it to fulfil this responsibility except by the aid of a large number of volunteer workers. The modern relation between the public authority and the voluntary worker is one of systematically organised partnership under expert direction. Thus, according to the proposals of the Minority Report, every case requiring notice or action of any sort will be dealt with both by voluntary workers and by the public authority, each in its own appropriate sphere, and each according to its special opportunities. The children of the district will not be divided between a Voluntary Aid Committee and the Public Assistance Committee, some being dealt with wholly by the one and the rest wholly by the other. The Local Education Authority must remain wholly responsible for preventing any kind of neglect in all the children of the district; but we already see its work, in the most progressive districts, dependent for its success upon the co-operation of a whole series of School Managers and Children’s Care Committees, Country Holiday Fund Committees and “Spectacle Committees,” and Apprenticeship Committees and what not. The Local Health Authority cannot cede to any Voluntary Agencies its responsibilities for the maintenance in health of all the population of its district; but the Medical Officer of Health needs to recruit, and is, in scores of towns, already recruiting, a whole army of volunteers in the Health Visitors, the organisers of “Schools for Mothers,” the nursing associations, the managers of convalescent homes, the “after-care” committees, the committees of voluntary institutions for cripples and epileptics, and so on. Even with regard to the newer public service in connection with mentally defective children, aged pensioners, or the unemployed, abundant use is already beginning to be made of the voluntary worker. The Minority Commissioners look, under their scheme, for an enormous extension of the sphere for volunteer work of this sort, organised in connection with one or other of the Committees of the County or Country Borough Council. Each Committee needs its own fringe of voluntary workers, who will act as its eyes and ears and fingers, in keeping touch with the huge masses of population with which it has to deal, and will enable it both to “search out” all the cases that need attention, irrespective of any application, and to invest the official machinery with that touch of personal interest and human sympathy which is so necessary for its successful working. And that fringe is already there. It is significant that the immediate result of the assumption by the London Education Authority of its new duties of feeding and medically inspecting the children of school age was the call, by the London County Council, for 7000 volunteers to fill its Children’s Care Committees alone. The Minority Report involves, in short, vastly greater numbers of voluntary workers than does the Majority Report, and assigns to them both a more important and a more hopeful sphere than the helping of particular individuals to “keep off the rates.”
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