AbstractsSocial Work

This is a study of common human needs as presented by 97 recipients of War Veterans’ Allowance^1 who during 1949 first applied to the Montreal District Office of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs^2 for supplementation from the Assistance Fund. The study is concerned with the way in which these needs have been determined, how the Assistance Fund was set up and how it bas been administered to meet them. Considerable change in public welfare principles, in Canada, United States, Great Britain and other western democracies, bas taken place during the last two decades. This transition has been away from the palliative type of public welfare which developed after the passing of the Elizabethan Poor Law and toward the ameliorative type of public welfare programmes which arose in these countries out of the 1930 depression. In Canada and the United States casework and social services have been incorporated in some public assistance programmes. In European countries the programmes were established earlier than in Canada and have created protection in many areas through social insurance. The trend there has been toward providing more social security through material assistance such as adequate housing, through public housing projects, and government sponsored medical facilities. During the depression era society could no longer refuse to recognize that some individuals were in necessitous circumstances through no fault of their own but through flaws in our economic systems [...]