California Social Welfare Archive: CATALOGUE

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CATALOGUE

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FAMILY SERVICE OF LOS ANGELES successor to
FAMILY WELFARE ASSOCIATION OF LOS ANGELES
Records 1930-97 - 25 ft 2inches

This rich collection, recording the history of the Family Service of Los Angeles, extends from minutes of the earliest organizational meetings held on the eve of the Great Depression, in a dining room of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, to minutes of the last meeting of the board of directors, sixty six years later, when agreement had been reached to seek refuge from financial collapse in a merger with the Didi Hirsch Community Mental Health Center. In the decades of its existence, while family life styles, the organization of social services, and demographics in the region underwent continuous change, Family Service struggled to meet the needs and expectations of an increasingly diverse population.

Included in the collection are complete runs of the minutes of the agency's board of directors, its district advisory boards, and all its principal committees, including executive, nominating, casework and finance, together with the records and reports of many short-lived committees and task forces called upon to deal with particular issues. Also present are financial reports, budgets, Community Chest and United Way allocation plans and requests, salary schedules, accreditation documentation, office manuals, workshop and seminar materials, newsletters, and scrapbooks. Correspondence of board members and executive directors is one of the few types of institutional archival material not found in quantity in this extraordinary record of the life and death of an institution. Of particular historical value are Depression era relief reports from l930 to l936, made under pressure as the new agency repeatedly expanded its services in its first years to keep pace with a daunting emergency. Also of interest, and instructive for the narrative they contain of failed survival strategies and misjudged undertakings, are records of the last ten years of Family Service's decline.

Los Angeles County in the early l920s doubled its population. As the city became metropolitan and its once distinct suburban communities began to spread out in continuous conurbation across the basin, city and county governments remained small and unsophisticated and the provision of adequate social services for the new population inevitably lagged. Family Service had its genesis in a 1925 report by social work educators Karl de Schweinitz and his wife Ruth Hill, whose "Social Work With Families in Los Angeles", produced under the direction of the American Association For Organizing Family Social Work, first alerted local social workers to the extent of the region's unmet need. But the Los Angeles Community Chest was then in only its first year of operation, and its social work arm, the Council of Social Agencies, had yet to be organized. In l926, the Social Welfare Committee of the Chest held a first meeting to consider the de Schweinitz-Hill proposal for a non-sectarian city-wide Los Angeles family social work agency, to be established on an experimental basis at a first year's cost of $50,000. The Community Welfare Federation, operating the Community Chest, determined that "an experiment which takes $50,000.00 to try out should not be included in the budget for this year."

Over the next three years the Social Welfare Committee modified de Schweinitz's proposal and scaled down its projected cost by half. An initial problem was a provision in the by-laws of the now established Council for Social Agencies that no new agency should be funded by the Chest until it had proved public support by surviving independently for one year. But by l929, with the boom well past in Los Angeles and unemployment already a serious problem, vociferous demands for increased social services were being heard from subscribers to the Community Chest. So the rule was amended to allow for the immediate support of any new agency actually required by the Community Welfare Federation. Eight existing agencies pledged themselves to sponsor the new Family Welfare Association "until it became a strong, centralized agency, able to lend an efficient hand helping families in need." These agencies were the American Legion Service Department, American Red Cross, Assistance League Good Samaritan Fund, Children's Protective Association, International institute, Philanthropy and Civics Club, Traveler's Aid Society, and Volunteers of America.

The first Board of Directors of the Family Welfare Association - as it was called until l946 when it was reincorporated as Family Service of Los Angeles - included five lay members and sixteen members appointed by the eight sponsoring agencies, which between them had until then handled all non-sectarian family social services in Los Angeles. A Case Committee set up to standardize policies among the agencies also included case supervisors from the Catholic Welfare and Jewish Social Services bureaus, and a representative from the County Welfare Department.

In its first year of operations, beginning on September 9, l930, the Family Welfare Association took its intake from the Welfare Federation's Information Service Bureau, with whom it shared clerical staff, budget, and offices in the Bradbury Building. A year later the agency moved into its own quarters and nominated a new, lay Board of Directors on the resignation, according to plan, of the sixteen agency representatives. In later years it was often said that Family Service of Los Angeles began as part of a federation, but early records of the agency make it clear that it was created and launched as a separate entity by Los Angeles' social work community.

Although Family Service opened with just one case supervisor and two caseworkers in Los Angeles, and one traveling caseworker in the San Fernando Valley, the agency was pressed almost immediately to extend its operations to Wilmington and San Pedro, where the Assistance League and the American Red Cross found themselves unable to deal with increasing numbers of families made destitute by unemployment. In l931 Family Service had a caseload of 1,187 families, which grew catastrophically to 18,071 families in the following year. By l933 the agency had increased its staff to ten caseworkers and had taken over, at their request, all family relief services in downtown Los Angeles for the Children's Protective Association, and the Philanthropy and Civics Club. The Assistance League lasted longer, but it also relinquished its city relief work in l936. Family Service in its second year opened offices in West Los Angeles and Pacific Palisades, with two additional branches in the San Fernando Valley, and it undertook parts of the caseloads of an overwhelmed Urban League and International institute.

For this additional work the agency was given additional funds, and its highly mobile caseworkers made full use of all available volunteer help - from local firemen collecting surplus foodstuff at their firehouses, to women's sewing circles, to concerned citizens moved to lend a hand by undeniable signs of poverty in Los Angeles. When all its allocations and reserves were used up by early summer in l933, the Family Service announced that it must receive more money, or be obliged to close its doors, adding that "this organization will not in any case run a deficit." Somehow extra funds were found but, when contributions to the Chest fell $300,000 short of expectation in l934, Family Service was compelled to cut intake, reduce family relief payments below the recommended budget, and withdraw services from outlying areas otherwise served only by the Salvation Army. Later that year, when substantial federal relief at last became available in California, Family Service was chosen as one of four private agencies in Los Angeles to dispense these funds, until federal offices were organized. For the rest of the decade Family Service would lose many of its caseworkers to the new federal service, where salaries were 50% higher for employees with any kind of social work experience.

At first only casework supervisors at Family Service had professional qualifications. Of the six women - and they were all women until l939 - in the agency's Metro office, five had B.A. degrees of some sort, three had taken extension courses at the University of Southern California's School of Social Work, and one had been enrolled in that School for a year. Whatever their experience and aptitude, their efforts during the first years of the agency's existence necessarily focused on the prompt giving of relief rather than casework. In l935 the worst appeared to be over, and the agency's executive secretary commented at a board meeting that federal relief agencies and the County Welfare Department would now be responsible for those in need "leaving the private agency in the field for the purpose of research, training of students, community planning, and specialized casework services."

As a private agency, Family Service was intended by the Welfare Federation of Los Angeles to serve the needs of families whose incomes or assets were too large for them to be eligible for assistance by the County Welfare Department. It was designed to serve not the poor but middle income clients who would display "at the time of application a desire and a capacity to profit from case work services." Records in the collection indicate that during the critical early years of the Depression, Family Services workers helped many whom it might have referred to the County Welfare Department, and that major donors to the Community Chest complained that Chest funds were being used to aid poor families for whom the County was responsible. A crisis was reached when representatives from the Chest arrived in Family Service offices intent on examining case files. By 1936 the decade the agency was entirely clear as to the type of clients it would serve. Asked by the County to take care of a destitute group of transient families in that year, Family Service replied that it had no funds for the purpose and added "they are not the type of families in which constructive casework can be done." Twenty years later, when Family Service proposed a research project involving aggressive casework with "reluctant clients" at a housing project in Wilmington, it stressed that this was an unusual undertaking with the comment - "It is not within the usual established program of agencies to bring family service to a selected neighborhood group where there exists such a discouragingly high incidence of health and welfare problems. Our agency could not accept this responsibility without serious curtailment of its already overstrained service to other client groups."

It took the defense industries of World War II to end economic decline in Los Angeles, but the stress of overcrowding, war production, and the schedules of employed mothers brought a mass of family problems to be alleviated by casework. By the end of the war Family Service found that it was not using all of the relief funds allocated to it and noted that the community seemed not to see the agency any longer as "a financial resource." In 1947, after a trial period and much discussion, Family Service decided to charge fees - on a sliding scale from $1 to $10 per week per family. The agency never earned more than a small fraction of its needed budget from fees, but in making this move, as did many other private agencies at that time, Family Service subtly changed its status in competition for Chest and United Way allocations.

The l950s saw a high demand for Family Service counseling, with a large, middle-income population of young families establishing themselves in the Los Angeles area. Outline case studies in the collection, used in caseworkers' regular seminars, illustrate marriage counseling and child guidance approaches in an era when husbands and wives struggled with the requirements of rigid gender roles, and compliant conformity was the goal for children. By the mid l950s months-long waiting lists for assistance had accumulated at Family Service offices - a condition that would persist until the advent of competition in the l970s, when clients could chose, as an alternative, the services of social workers offering psychotherapeutic counseling in private practice. Family Service was never able to extend its services to meet demand because of the scarcity of trained workers in the early days, and because it simply got into the habit, over the years, of paying salaries sometimes 20% below prevailing, recommended levels. Board of directors’ meeting minutes make it clear that the agency understood the principal reason for its difficulties in staffing, yet it continually chose to cut its labor costs, spiraling downward in the most obvious area for economy, when Chest and United Way allocations fell short.

By l961 the territory for which Family Service was theoretically responsible was 90% of that covered by the Community Chest, with the remaining 10% served by the Assistance League and Volunteers of America. This area was over 700 square miles with a population of 3.5 million. A new executive director then employed by the agency, who had experience in eastern family service agencies, compared the situation in Los Angeles, with one family service worker to every 200,000 persons, to that in eastern metropolitan areas where the average was one worker to every 10-20,000 persons. He concluded that Family Service was grossly under funded, and proposed to its board of directors that the agency decentralize, dividing itself into six smaller agencies each with its own 21 member board.. These smaller agencies, he believed, would each gain an identity of its own and "a more intimate relationship to its own constituency, and a responsiveness to local needs." He also thought that it would be harder for the Chest to cut allocations for small agencies, while it was able to shift responsibility for downsizing and difficult economies of scale to the administrators of large centralized agencies. But centralization was the wave of the future - and Family Service's board of directors was not about to vote itself out of office.

For the next twenty years Family Services pursued its core counseling program for a middle income and largely white client base, in an era when the social service needs of low income and racially diverse populations were attracting increased attention. At the time of the Watts Riots in l965, the agency had offices no nearer to the outbreak than Inglewood, with a newly established one-worker outpost in Compton. From time to time Family Service had expressed the intention of opening an office "adjacent" to south-central Los Angeles, when and if it could find funds given its heavy commitments elsewhere. After the riots the executive director wrote to a board member that "the occurrence of the tragic riots has shaken all of Los Angeles, and brought home to us the meagerness of our resources ... Time for consideration is past, and action in establishing some tangible service appears of greatest importance." Some supplemental emergency funding allowed the agency to place two workers for a year in a Watts office manned by volunteers in a Los Angeles County Bar project. During the "War On Poverty" the agency did cooperate with the Urban League in a parent education program called "Project Enable", but it effectively declined to provide any training to a group of "indigenous aides" working with families in Latino neighborhoods. At a committee meeting the executive director commented on the "vested interests of various political forces" which could only "have a deleterious effect on programs financed through these federal funds."

In l970, when such funding had begun to decline sharply in Los Angeles, Family Service belatedly appointed its first committee to study the business of contracting to supply services to government agencies. Every year the agency's allocation from United Way was less than requested, and it ended l974 with its first deficit. At board meetings assertions were made that "United Way will have to face the fact they must pay for quality service". One member thought of writing to ask United Way "why they do not think we are worthy of additional support," while another suggested, perceptively, that the board "simply accept that the kinds of services we are delivering, in the mode they are being delivered, is something the community is not willing to support, and examine alternative modes of service delivery." In l976 Family Service wrote to United Way - "We are a small agency with no significant reserves and our financial problems have made it impossible to hire enough professional counselors - and to pay existing staff a competitive salary - to meet the increasing need for our service." United Way replied with a recommendation that the agency hire more "bi-lingual and bi cultural" staff, and a reiteration of early suggestions that it make better use of volunteers and para- professionals. The agency then made little use volunteers because, as the executive director remarked, "good volunteers are hard to identify, and bad ones hard to terminate." Some attempts were made, with a pilot volunteer training program in the San Fernando Valley, beginning with just one volunteer, and the agency's first Latino worker was hired in l977. But meanwhile eight staff members left for better paid work, and Family Service decided to close two one-worker outpost offices in reputedly dangerous neighborhoods where workers felt unsafe.

In the spring of l981 Family Service board members were summoned to meet with a notice headed "Cash-Flow Crisis is Here!", and asked to advise on a variety of drastic cost reduction measures, including cuts in staff salaries and pension contributions. That summer the executive director resigned, and in the fall a new director was hired - a man with special training in agency management. Evidently he brought a new spirit of confidence and optimism to Family Service. The board gave him the upgraded title of Chief Executive Officer, with expanded responsibilities and powers. Recognizing that the agency had never spent much time on public relations, fund raising, or marketing, he paid great attention to these areas from the outset, organizing seminars on "Techniques of Personal Solicitation", and viewing the marketing of Family Service as an activity to be directed at potential donors rather than users. He was fertile in suggestions for new programs - to counsel crime victims through a contract with a company that insured people against becoming crime victims, for example - and prompt in devising programs for which funding was known to be available. He decided that the agency should become "a family serving rather than a family counseling agency", noting that the former had no core program, embraced all aspects of family life, and made use of a highly differentiated and inter-disciplinary staff, while the latter stuck to its core counseling program, decried the competitive environment, and relied solely on social work training. Only one member of the board of directors objected to the new CEO’s unilateral decision. She asked him what authority he had to make this change - a question that seems never to have been addressed. Of all the new activities begun in the prosperous 1980's, only Employee Assistance Programs seem to have been solidly profitable for the agency. Many of these were referred by Family Service of America, with whom Family Service of Los America was associated. But when a staff member embezzled funds from one such contract in l988, this source of income was lost for over a year, pending an embarrassing inquiry and repayment of the funds.

In l987, at the top of a real estate boom, Family Service signed a ten year lease on expensive mid-city headquarter offices. When the rent became too burdensome in l991, the agency simply moved out - risking a law suit which inevitably came - and moved into more modest quarters it had mortgaged three years earlier for an amount now well in excess of it market value. An orange grove bequeathed to the agency by a former board member proved unsalable, expensive to manage, and a heavy loss when all its fruit was frozen in the first winter of Family Service's ownership. A building in an undesirable section of the city, acquired by the agency in the course a merger with a suicide prevention agency, went unsold for four years, while maintenance costs became insupportable and all its tenants moved out. A buyer finally appeared, but the sale went bad in escrow, with subsequent prolonged litigation. None of these real estate mishaps was the CEO's fault, but he, and an increasingly anxious board of directors, could be seen as responsible for the failure of a number of new agency programs, undertaken without adequate planning or staff expertise, for which outside funding was subsequently curtailed or withdrawn.

By l991 the agency was operating on a $3 million budget, with ten satellite locations throughout Los Angeles. But it was bleeding resources, with a large unsecured bank loan and all but $25,000 of its once substantial reserves spent to supplement operating costs. There seemed always to be a promise of profitable contracts on the horizon, but those which did materialize rarely paid their way. Meanwhile United Way, which provided over one third of Family Service's funding, was damaged in its fund-raising capacity by a widely reported scandal involving its top national executive. Allocations began to plummet - from $1,172,568 in l991 to $309,392 in l995. No normal community fund raising efforts, however energetic, could fill the gap. Against this backdrop of severe reduction, Family Service's board of directors - much depleted by resignations and unfilled seats - began to rouse itself, asking for the resignation of the CEO in the spring of l992. His replacement, who served at first on a part time basis, resigned before his appointment could be confirmed when he understood the task he faced. For Family Service's last CEO, the task was to keep the agency a "going concern", operating virtually without reserves on a month-to-month basis. Deep cuts had to be made in staffing and services, and a merger somehow negotiated with a compatible and economically stable agency. All this was done by a veteran agency director, who earned a vote of "thanks and admiration" from the board. But Family Service had not been able to negotiate from a position of strength. It had many liabilities and few assets beyond its name, and it was the name that would begin to disappear in l995, when Family Service was merged into the Didi Hirsch agency.

LOS ANGELES COUNTY COMMUNITY RELATIONS CONFERENCE successor to:
COMMUNITY RELATIONS CONFERENCE OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
Records 1947-91 - 5 feet

The Community Relations Conference of Southern California (CRCSC) was established in May, l947, at a meeting called by Dr. Genevieve Carter of the Los Angeles Welfare Planning Council. Dr Carter had been responsible in l942-3 for setting up what was known as the "Little Tokyo" Committee, in the Health Division of the Planning Council. At that time the section of Los Angeles which had been inhabited by Japanese citizens, before their internment, was being settled by a large influx of black population from the southern states - with resulting overcrowding and health problems. By the end of World War II, the Little Tokyo Committee had moved out of the Health Division, and become a central planning body renamed the Community Relations Committee. With newly assertive and growing black and Latino populations, in a city packed with those who had come to do defense work and showed no signs of returning to their home states, and thousands of Japanese residents freed from the camps, many Angelenos feared more of the kinds of disturbances experienced in the "Zoot Suit" riots of l943.

Dr. Carter had nominal charge of the activist Community Relations Committee, which seemed likely to engage in political advocacy of a type not welcome in bodies funded by the Community Chest. As Dr. Carter said later - "The Community Relations Committee did not belong in the Welfare Council." She therefore eased it out, and into the community where it did belong and was needed. In March, l947, white students at a city high school held a public demonstration against the increasing enrollment of black students. In the aftermath of this incident, half a dozen different race relations groups discovered that they had all been working to mediate the school situation without coordination or knowledge of the others' activities. Two months later, when Dr Carter called for a public meeting of all "intergroup" and race relations agencies in Los Angeles, fifty-three such organizations responded. Of these eleven subsequently combined with the Community Relations Committee to form the CRCSC, an independent, non-governmental coalition. Initial members were the American Jewish Committee, the Congregational Conference of Southern California - Social Action Department, the American Jewish Congress, the Japanese American Citizens League, the Los Angeles Urban League, the NAACP, the Jewish Labor Committee, the Congress of American Indians, and the Pacific Coast Council on Intercultural Education.

Membership increased to 20 groups by the end of CRCSC's first year, and stood at over 90 at the height of the Conference's influence in the l960s and l970s. Anyone who got a letter from the Conference in those years found an impressive and long list of supporting agencies printed on the back of each sheet of letter head paper. As the first executive director put it - "If you want your voice and vote to count for social change, you've got to link it with like-minded organizations with the expertise to make it count in the right places." CRCSC got off to a slow start but a good one in l949 when the American Missionary Association provided it with a year's free half-time services of a "race relations worker", to be shared with the Social Action Department of the Congregational Conference of Southern California. George Thomas, the black worker sent by the Missionary Society became CRCSC's full time paid executive director after a year,. and stayed with the Conference until l962.

The records of the Community Relations Conference - which lasted longer than any other such group in the nation - are not complete here, but they do include full minutes for the first ten annual meetings, with executive committee, board of directors and delegate assembly minutes covering the following 31 years. Correspondence files for successive executive directors of the Conference display the range of their influential acquaintance, and their skill and patience in advocacy and mediation. Correspondence with well known figures, particularly in liberal or left wing circles of the era, appears often - from Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas to Carey McWilliams, both of whom addressed the Conference. Also found are references to energetic young members of the Conference, such as Kenneth Hahn, Tom Bradley, Edward R. Roybal, and Maxine Waters, who later would become political leaders. Materials in some fifty files reflect the work of the Conference's standing committees in such basic areas as fair housing and equality of opportunity in employment and education, and in other areas needing special attention - such as immigration legislation, equity in city planning, fair political practices, and the eradication of racism in law enforcement. Also collected here are publications of the Community Relations Educational Foundation (CREF), including its Guide to Civic Responsibility, its directories of Legal Resources, and of "Employment and Training Resources for Los Angeles and Vicinity", together with Community Intelligence Bulletins on ethnic and racial minorities in the area.

For six months after the first meeting, small committees worked on the proposed structure and functions of CRCSC, and on nominations for a slate of officers. From the beginning it was decided that member groups should retain their own autonomy, pursuing their own agendas as before, with CRCSC serving as coordinator and clearing house for action by the whole membership. The tone of the organization was well expressed by a labor union leader at the first annual meeting when he said that the group was dedicated to constructive, progressive, democratic action but would avoid the trap of seeing itself as " the sole bulwark between Fascism and civilization." CRCSC's methods were based on negotiation, persuasion and rational argument, with none of the publicity attendant on open confrontation - except in a few instances, as in its dealings with Chief William Parker of the Los Angeles Police Department. The Conference's strengths were in coordinated communication - internally through its various committees and monthly delegate assembly meetings, and externally through its long-lived newsletter "The Community Reporter" and a network of "listening posts" set up to gauge public attitudes in the Los Angeles area. It was able to act quickly when necessary because members of the Conference trusted CRCSC to represent their interests fully without the delay involved in arriving at formal agreements. The coalition also had secret weapons in its "Joint Staff" capabilities, using in concert for particular operations paid staffers from member agencies, and in its cadre of volunteer lawyers ready to draft model legislation, file "amicus curiae" briefs, or bring actions in any court at short notice.

When CRCSC began in l947, Los Angeles had de facto housing segregation, and widespread legal segregation maintained by restrictive covenants governing the sale of real estate. It also therefore had de facto school segregation. There was open discrimination in employment, and much customary discrimination in hotels, restaurants, clubs, and even stores, such as Bullock's Wilshire. In l950 CRCSC shamed Bullock's into lifting its ban barring black shoppers from its Tea Room. Most white Angelenos, if they thought about it at all, accepted the status quo in race relations. Then came "Brown v. Board of Education" in 1954, which changed the law, and increased both inter-racial tensions and public consciousness of racial issues. In 1963 the March on Birmingham and the beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement, ushered in a new era.. For CRCSC it was the l965 Watts Riot - or "The Crisis of Los Angeles" as the coalition termed it - which brought real change, with a new level of concern in the region, and new hope of progress. But the role of the coalition meanwhile became problematic, as its executive Julian Keiser noted in a l968 memorandum. "New constellations of Black and Brown groups, which are more militant than most CRCSC members, are at the forefront of the confrontation with present injustices", he wrote, adding that the Conference, being made up primarily of groups with white constituencies, would need in future to play a complex part in supporting and backing up the more militant groups.

CRCSC had spent twenty years educating and speaking for minority groups who were struggling for their rights. The goal now would be to work not for these groups but with them. Keiser understood, earlier than most, that the torch had passed. The Conference restructured itself, adapted to changing times, and found specific areas such as Los Angeles schools where it could do most good. But in l982 the executive director of the Los Angeles County Human Relations Committee noted in a speech to CRCSC that the political situation in Los Angeles had entered a new phase, with momentum lost, more and more different groups claiming separate rights, arguments becoming diffuse, and support declining for effective school desegregation and affirmative action. inside the coalition there were money problems, growing dissent, and unwillingness to allow the executive to speak for all, as it once had. After the retirement of Keiser in l988, the Conference was unable to attract or afford a director of his stature, and it began to drift. The executive committee complained that while it grew old and tired, CRCSC was failing to enroll new, young members. Meanwhile, there were well-staffed agencies at all levels of government attempting to improve rights and opportunities for minority groups, and many vigorous ethnic and racial non-profit organizations working in the same field. At a last meeting of the board of directors in January, l99l, members asked themselves if they any longer filled a need and concluded, bravely, that they did not. Resolving to go out with dignity and "a flourish rather than a whimper", they voted to dissolve the Conference on March 31, l991, and to hold a last dinner to celebrate its achievements over 41 years.

LOS ANGELES ROUNDTABLE FOR CHILDREN
Records 1982 - 3 ft 6 inches

The Los Angeles Roundtable For Children began in the fall of l982 with a series of informal monthly meetings convened by faculty members at the University of Southern California's School of Social Work, when child welfare leaders from the public and private sectors met to address evident deterioration of Los Angeles county's protective services. Several instance of failure to protect abused and neglected children from further harm had prompted adverse press comment and public dismay. Roundtable members, who were committed to putting the interests of the region's children before those of their individual departments or agencies, determined that there was an extraordinary lack of basic information about the characteristics and needs of Los Angeles' two million children, and also about the complex organization and financing of the child welfare programs then in place.

The collection contains the group's groundbreaking early volunteer research reports, designed to provide crucial missing information and recommendations for change and reform. Roundtable's recommendations were endorsed in l986 by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, which ordered the County Chief Administrative Officer to seek consensus in a strategy to implement them. Also present are documents reflecting the resulting "turf" struggle over the establishment of a Children's Planning Council to administer a separate Children's Budget. By "following the money" Roundtable researchers had discovered that l9 government departments provided more than 90 different services for children, working without coordination and between them spending fully 29% of the County's $8.6 billion annual budget.

By 1990 the Planning Council was in place, and a new group - "Children Now" - with corporate funding and some shared membership with the Roundtable, had undertaken the continued provision of basic data and progress reports on child welfare in the County. Roundtable researchers then were able to address specific child welfare issues, producing reports on topics including private sector services, services for children with disabilities, mental health services, social and health services in Los Angeles County Schools, and comprehensive youth development policies. Records of Roundtable's informal meetings in its earliest years are lacking, but those for l989-95 reflect fully the repositioning problems experienced by the group after its initial achievements as an entirely volunteer operation. Included in the collection are the original Roundtable mission statement, and articles of incorporation taken out in l989 when the group felt the need for a paid executive director and began to seek funding from various foundations. Of particular interest, in minutes for 1990s board meetings, are discussions of appropriate fund raising strategies, and reconsideration of membership eligibility policies, with the object of maintaining both research productivity and influence in the child welfare community.

All Roundtable reports are collected, together with "Children Now" reports published between 1989-96, reports and records of the Children's Planning Council from 1992-98, and many publications on child welfare from the city and county of Los Angeles and the State of California during this period. Also included are minutes and agendas of the Los Angeles County Commission For Children's Services from 1990-96. All these materials, together with a range of miscellaneous reports on topics of concern to the Roundtable - including education, juvenile probation and protection, adolescent pregnancy prevention, and family preservation services - afford a detailed picture of child welfare services in a decade when Los Angeles County, after long neglect, attempted to provide effective protective services to its rapidly increasing juvenile population.

ALL NATIONS CHURCH AND FOUNDATION
Records and Papers 1925-1965 - 2ft 6 inches

All Nations, in its heyday the largest and most effective social welfare organization in Los Angeles, was begun in l9l4 in an east-central section of the city then filling up rapidly with immigrants fleeing war and famine in Europe. The growth of Los Angeles had led to the incursion of wholesale businesses into this formerly prosperous middle class community. The new arrivals packed into the existing housing, with four and five family groups filling what had once been single family residences. Local churches, deprived of their original congregations, were dismayed at the prospect of serving this new, needy population, but the City Missionary Society of the Methodist Church had been looking for just such a settlement opportunity. It took over an abandoned church and sent in a young pastor fired with the church's "social doctrine". The collection records the practical energy of Reverend Bromley Oxnam, later Bishop Oxnam, as he gathered donations, organized volunteers, bought land and buildings, equipped gymnasiums, playgrounds, libraries, and clinics for a community where 75% of families were on public assistance. Character-building activities for the children, and an extraordinarily successful Boy's Club, were of paramount concern. "These are children of the community who have no parlors, back yards, or even people who care what happens to them," wrote one of Oxnam's early volunteers.

By l927, when All Nations completed a new complex of buildings, the Boys" Club had 950 members of 30 nationalities and l5 different religions. The deteriorating area had the highest delinquency rate in the city, but within the next three years this would drop by 65%. So impressed was an "unknown donor" by the improvement that he offered to fund a child welfare clinic at All Nations through the five worst years of the Depression. The collection contains the annual records of this clinic, and also those of a social services research unit run by the University of Southern California. Also well documented is All Nations' organization of a cadre of 50 volunteer doctors, surgeons, and dentists to provide services to adults. Reverend Oxnam was succeeded by Dr Robert McKibben, whose skills as social worker, fund raiser, and collaborator with other social welfare agencies, including the Federal and Los Angeles Relief Administrations and the National Youth Administration, are reflected throughout the collection in his voluminous correspondence.

In l952 the Methodist Church promoted McKibben to other work, and the record becomes sparse until the mid l960s, by which time All Nation's original client population of over 60,000 had been sharply reduced by slum clearance and the industrial development of east-central Los Angeles. Principal support now came from the United Way, rather than the Methodist Church with its vigorous religious motivation, and questions were raised about the "need and desirability" of traditional settlement programs in an emptying community. The collection contains the plans that All Nations made then to move its operations to south-central and east Los Angeles, together with proposals for a seemingly unrealistic new building program. But what had once been a building-based service, as one commentator noted, was about to become a "service on demand" in various communities throughout the Los Angeles area.

BOARD OF SOCIAL WORK EXAMINERS, and
The Committee on Social Work Education of the California Conference of Social Work
Records. 1949-55 - 5 inches

California Assembly Bill 1812, passed on July 18, l945, provided for a program of voluntary registration of social workers, with the designation RSW. This was to be administered by a seven member Board of Social Work Examiners, appointed by the Governor and operating within the Department of Professional and Vocational Standards. The California Conference of Social Work had set up its own voluntary system in l932 but this had never attracted much support. A 1929 bill, introduced by the League of Women Voters but opposed by many influential social workers, had died in committee. By l950 there were an estimated 7,000 social work positions in California. The Board, after registering some 4,000 workers in its first two years, was never thereafter able to increase the number. New applicants took and passed the Board's twice yearly examinations, but attrition was high among workers who began to see no great return in paying annual dues for a registration neither required, nor much valued, by most employers.

The standard of eligibility for the registration examination required a minimum of one year of graduate work. Most of the nearly 2,000 employees in public welfare and public assistance jobs were ineligible for registration having , at best, bachelor degrees . While public welfare departments mushroomed in the Depression and grew throughout World War II, the state's three graduate schools of social work had fallen far short of need in the production of trained workers. For the inadequate numbers that were graduated, public welfare jobs had little appeal. So hard to fill were these jobs in remote rural locations that even senior staff in those areas were often without any formal social work education.

If the immediate goal of the registration program was to raise professional standards and improve the professional status of social workers, it could hardly succeed while nearly one third of those in the field lacked even minimum professional training. If the ultimate goal of the Board of Examiners was to introduce mandatory licensing for social workers - as it probably was from the beginning - such a plan must fail without an increase in the availability of professional education for the large numbers of educationally unqualified but very necessary workers already in practice.

In l950 California was the only state with voluntary registration of social workers. Illinois planned a program modeled on the California legislation, and Ohio considered going directly to licensing. In the next five years New York, Minnesota, Missouri, Massachusetts, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, Indiana, and Arizona, all pondered various forms of regulation. As a Massachusetts social worker wrote to the Board of Examiners "As you know, everyone looks to California's experience to persuade other states to adopt the same procedure."

The collection reflects the work of the small, unpaid, and geographically scattered Board of Examiners as it set, tested and graded twice yearly examinations, struggled to hold frequent meetings despite skimpy travel allowances, and to run an effective advocacy and promotional program from its San Francisco office staffed by one executive secretary with, initially, only part-time clerical assistance. The executive secretary, when not personally packing examination booklets into wooden boxes for delivery by Railway Express to sites around the state, managed to get access to "the new IBM machines" at the Department of Health, where he undertook statistical analyses. Beyond such detail, the correspondence of the Board in the early l950s reflects constant attempts to secure backing from leaders in the social work profession. But letters asking for meetings with the deans of the three graduate schools went unanswered, and invitations to attend Board meetings sent t o major employers in the public welfare system usually met with regrets. There were then l9 separate social work chapters and associations in California, and the Board faced an uphill task in attempting to engage the attention of potential supporters in these groups. That no more than 1,500 social workers in the state belonged to these associations was seen as evidence of a " lag in professionalism" by the Board of Examiners.

By l952 the Board had evidently decided that educational standards and the status of the profession would best be elevated by a process of exclusion. Legislation was introduced to limit the use of the term "social worker" to those professionals registered as such. Publicly, legislators explained their failure to introduce the proposed bill by calling it "premature in a period of occupation shortages" - a reference to Korean War conscription. The bill had aroused strong opposition from some public welfare administrators, who already saw the RSW program, with its preferential routes to promotion, as a cause of resentment among their employees. Many believed that denying public welfare workers the title, at least, of social workers would have a catastrophic effect on morale. Legislators tended to see the proposal as a monopolistic move on the part of the profession, rather than as one motivated by concern for public safety. (At that point there were bills lined up in the Assembly from l8 newly formed occupational groups seeking delegation of power from the state to control entry of new workers into their occupations).

Records for l952-53 reflect not only the anxieties and objections raised by the attempt to restrict the use of the term "social worker", but also problems faced by the Board of Examiners and leaders in the profession when they attempted to write the restrictive bill, which would clearly require definitions of the terms "social work" and "social worker". Numerous meetings and conferences were held by groups attempting the work of definition. The failure of exclusion led to the inevitable alternative of inclusion, necessarily calling for a large extension of social work education. Many colleges were planning , or already offered undergraduate courses with a major in social work, and others hoped to be authorized to educate social workers at the graduate level. But what was most needed, according to the University of California, was "a greater variety and volume of part-time in-service education, including appropriate courses for credit toward the professional degree." The educational problems of public welfare workers would be solved, it was hoped, by means of an Educational Leave of Absence program of one year's maximum duration, with full pay or stipend. Some public welfare administrators, particularly in Los Angeles, opposed the bill on grounds that their workers had no need of further education, and the legislation stalled when first presented in l954. But in l955 it passed.

With these papers, which reflect a significant phase in the development of social work as a profession, are also collected records of the Committee on Social Work Education of the California Conference of Social Work for the same period. The correspondence, work and described activities of the members of the same small group of social work leaders, educators, and legislators, are to be found in both collections. Maurice Ostomel, the donor of these papers, had an extraordinary dual role in the proceedings as chairman of both the Board of Social Work Examiners, from 1949-53, and of the Committee on Social Work Education, from its inception in l951 until l954. Included in the two collections are correspondence, agenda, minutes, reports, legislative materials, statistics - and one sample examination question.

CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION FOR HEALTH AND WELFARE
Papers 1933-1969 - 10 inches

California Association for Health and Welfare was the name adopted in l958 by the former California Conference of Social Work, which had been an important and highly influential assembly of professional social workers and lay members dedicated to public service. The group began in l901, as the California Conference of Charities and Corrections, with the initial goal of promoting legislation to establish a state department supervising the state's welfare activities - as had been proposed repeatedly to the legislature since l885. After the California State Department of Charities and Corrections (later the Department of Social Welfare) was finally set up in l903, the Conference played major roles in the development of the state's juvenile courts, in the reform of county hospitals, in pioneering state aid for needy children and the aged, and in the registration and certification of social workers. It also developed an effective legislative advocacy arm, first flexed during assaults on state social services launched by the legislature during the l930s. At its height in the late l930s and early l940s, the Conference had a membership of over 3,000 and would often host 1,000 or more attendees at its annual conferences.

The bulk of the collection reflects the condition of the Association from l965 to l969, when membership had sunk to around 600 and was in an apparently irreversible decline leading to dissolution of the group in February, l969. Letters, memoranda, and financial papers reflect the inability of leadership to reverse the fortunes of the Association in a rapidly changing political and professional climate. Increasing debt, and a fragmentation of interests in the profession, crippled the group's ability to continue its important legislative activity, or to host regional and statewide conferences that would attract any substantial attendance. Included in the collection are executive committee minutes, planning materials and reports from regional and statewide conferences, newsletters, and miscellaneous Association publications.

LOS ANGELES COUNTY COORDINATING COUNCILS
Records. 1930-1948 - 10 inches

Coordinating Councils, or voluntary neighborhood councils interested in community social welfare, were a national phenomenon during World War I. Their development was encouraged by President Woodrow Wilson who recognized their potential use in the rapid coordination of national defense activities at the local level. The Councils typically were concerned with the maintenance of community morale, the prevention of juvenile delinquency, and the promotion of wholesome recreation and character-building group activities for young people. As advisory rather than functional bodies, their effectiveness depended on the cooperation of community social service agencies, schools, parent/teacher associations, and law enforcement personnel. In Los Angeles County the first Coordinating Councils were launched in l932 with the formal sponsorship of the Juvenile Court and the County Probation Office. They therefore enjoyed considerable authority, particularly in their attention to the management of "pre-delinquent" and "unadjusted" children, and in their work with juvenile parolees referred to their "adjustment committees" by the Juvenile Court. The volunteer members of the Coordinating Councils attempted to cope with severe community dislocation during two world wars and a prolonged depression. As professional skills and expertise increased among social workers, and with the development of new public services in the area of juvenile delinquency, the qualifications of members of Coordinating Councils inevitably came under some scrutiny.

The collection includes minutes of meetings of the Executive Board of Los Angeles County Coordinating Councils between l943 and 1952, with related reports and papers, and also records of a separate organization, Coordinating Councils, Inc, which was directed between l938 and l944 by four prominent members of the Board of Los Angeles County Coordinating Councils. This Board convened representatives of the more than sixty Councils in Los Angeles County, together with executives of public and private agencies, civic group and service club leaders, religious leaders, recreation workers, school board members, and law enforcement personnel. The papers of the Los Angeles County Coordinating Councils, from l930 to 1948, include voluminous rosters of general and standing committee memberships, county-wide address listings, organizational charts, local area reports, program proposals, research papers, and public relations memoranda.. The collection reflects, particularly in it several commentaries on the responsibilities of citizens in a democracy, the anxiety felt by the Coordinating Councils about possible ideological contamination from the fascist and totalitarian regimes then dominating Europe, an anxiety that found expression in l933 in widespread suspicion of "communistic" tendencies among East Los Angeles' growing youth gangs. Also apparent from the collection is the extensive office and research assistance made available to the Councils by County relief agencies ready to put "flying squadrons" of workers on relief at the Councils' disposal. During World War II, the collection reflects the Councils' concern that public attention was focused with such intensity on military success and arms production that little attention was given to deteriorating social welfare on the home front.

Meanwhile, the Councils' difficulties were compounded by a major loss to the draft of trained personnel in all social service and law enforcement agencies. Of particular interest is a l943 report on the Findings and Recommendations of a Los Angeles County Grand Jury investigating the notorious "Zoot Suit" disturbances, and also a detailed 1941 survey of the 14 most disadvantaged and impoverished sections of Los Angeles, designated as "Less Chance Areas" by the Information Division of the Work Projects Administration, which undertook the study for the Los Angeles County Coordinating Councils.

Coordinating Councils, Inc, whose minutes, papers, and correspondence from l938-45 are included in the collection, was incorporated as a research and service organization for the advancement of community coordination. In the six years of its active existence the organization served as a national clearing house for research, assembled a specialized library, published a bimonthly magazine - "Community Coordination" and a well-received manual, and planned and conducted regional, state, and national conferences. Its declared ambition was "to organize in every community throughout the nation a council composed of representatives of all the forces operative therein." With influential backing at the state level, Coordinating Councils Inc. was initially able to obtain grants from two large California foundations, but was eventually forced to cease operations when it failed to solve the problem of permanent funding. The collection reflects the efforts of the group to finance its activities, which included extensive travel to attend meetings of Coordinating Councils across the country. Reports of proceedings at such meetings in the collection suggest the political stance then of many Coordinating Councils, who tended to oppose, as detrimental to community influence and responsibility, the continuing concentration of economic and policy control in the federal government. The collection also suggests the dissatisfaction felt by some Coordinating Councils during World War II at the minimal role they were assigned in local defense operations, as compared to the part played by USO.

CULP, GLADYS H.
Papers 1945 -1968 - 3 inches

Gladys H. Culp was a sociology undergraduate student at the University of Southern California in the mid l940's, who seems also to have done some graduate work there in the mid l950's.

The collection contains student materials, including book reports, term projects, examination papers, and essay on such topics eugenics, race relations, industrial sociology, and union leadership. By l968 Culp had become a Supervising Social Worker at the Metro North District of the Bureau of Public Assistance of Los Angeles County. In l964 she had led a statewide demonstration project, undertaken by Adult Protective Services, to transfer patients, many of whom had been institutionalized for decades, from state hospitals and institutions for the mentally retarded and impaired out into the community. Over a four year period, Culp and the unit she headed - entirely made up of workers with "two years experience with the agency, but no professional social work training" - were responsible for the placement of 585 removed mental patients, mostly in private board and care and nursing homes. Culp was awarded certificates of commendation and appreciation for her work in this demonstration project. Of particular interest is her manuscript account of its accomplishment.

EL NIDO SERVICES, EL NIDO LODGES
and Child, Youth & Parent Counseling
Papers 1933-1986 (Bulk 1976-82) - 2.5 feet

El Nido was originally a project of the Los Angeles Section of the National Council of Jewish Women. This group established a Children's Bureau in Los Angeles in 1925, and three years later built a camp for underprivileged and "pre-tubercular" girls in Laurel Canyon. At some point thereafter operation of the Children's Bureau passed to the Council of Jewish Women of Los Angeles, Inc. This California corporation, with identical membership to the Los Angeles Section of the National Council of Jewish Women, may have been organized as a parallel agency to facilitate local fund raising and participation in the Los Angeles Community Chest. During World War II and its aftermath the Los Angeles Jewish Women's Council was particularly concerned with the welfare of emigres from Nazi oppression in Europe. In 1954, the Council's articles of incorporation stated its purpose "to sponsor a social agency carrying on a program of social service in the fields of child guidance, service to the foreign born, and such other social service programs as the Los Angeles Section of the National Council of Jewish Women shall agree upon."

By the mid l950s most Jewish refugees bound for Los Angeles had arrived and been given full assistance by the Council, and the agency's attention began to focus exclusively on disadvantaged adolescent girls, many of whom were referred as wards of court in need of residential therapy and counseling services. By the mid l970s, when El Nido comprised three residential lodges and an outpost program of social services provided to Los Angeles school districts, the purposes of the Los Angeles Council of Jewish Women began to diverge from those of its originator, the National Council of Jewish Women. El Nido had always been non-sectarian in its staffing and service policies, but in the l970s the rapidly increasing ethnic diversity of the communities in which it operated created a need for an ethnically and culturally diverse board of directors rather than with one with membership drawn solely from the Los Angeles Section of the National Council of Jewish Women. The complicated split between "the Section" and El Nido, finalized in l978, freed the agency from sectarian obligation, but also left it without the financial support and sponsorship of the National Council of Jewish Women.

These agency records, which cover the most mundane practical details of El Nido's operations, documenting its real estate management, zoning battles, tax questions, insurance and "disaster preparedness" provisions, and occasional personnel problems, reflect also the difficulties confronting an agency in the late l970s that found itself providing outmoded services to a radically changed client population. As El Nido negotiated to free itself from close association with the Section, it also re-evaluated its program and its ability to manage, as an open institution, the increasingly violent and seriously delinquent girls referred to it by county probation departments. In l980 the loss of the lease of its largest residential building, without which operation of the two smaller units was economically impossible, came almost as a fortunate break for El Nido.

By then welfare policy makers, and some legislators, had begun to promote family preservation in virtually all circumstances, and to disfavor social services provided to adolescents separated from their families in residential facilities. That the El Nido board of directors was deeply engaged in the debate is evident from legislative material collected here, and from its correspondence, particularly with the California Association of Children's Residential Centers which was leading an advocacy campaign in the legislature for maintenance of residential services. In l981, after the inevitable closure of the residential facilities which had been the setting for El Nido's operation for decades, the agency turned vigorously to the business of fund raising, promotion, and development of outpost offices where it would provide a variety of social services in fifteen Los Angeles communities under a new name - Children, Youth & Parent Counseling.

DEAN, JESSIE E.
Papers 1916-1943 - 5 inches

Jessie E. Dean was employed by the Los County Department of Charities from l9l9 to 1943, and served as Supervisor in the successive Divisions of Outdoor Relief, County Welfare and Indigent Relief. A citation of appreciation from her fellow workers, found in this collection, noted that she was the first, or "near first" trained social worker to practice in Los Angeles. Certainly she was a founding member of the Los Angeles Chapter of the American Association of Social Workers, begun in l923, and also of its journal "The Lens", published from l926-37. A 1916-17 bulletin of the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy, annotated in Dean's handwriting, indicates that she studied there and was taught by Edith Abbott and Sophonisba Breckinridge.

The collection, made up of a miscellany of professional papers accumulated during Dean's career and preserved by a co-worker on her retirement, reflects the high level of personal dedication, social conscience, and moral conviction characteristic of social workers of her generation. A strong teaching ethic is evident in the detailed instructional outlines she compiled for the training of new "visitors" and student social workers. The collection contains descriptive annual reports for the County Welfare Division, from l921-32 and for l935, written by Dean for delivery to the Board of Supervisors by her Superintendent. In effect these long accounts are vivid essays on social welfare conditions prevailing in Los Angeles during the hectic population increase of the l920’s followed by the Depression. The gradually changing tone of the reports, as professional social workers found themselves transformed into emergency relief dispensers, indicates the difficult adaptation required of Dean and her co-workers in the early l930s. Also included in the collection is a MS draft of a critical account of County Welfare operations in l925, journals, reprints, pamphlets, articles, sermons, seminar notes and transcripts, reports, teaching materials and book excerpts and outlines, together with some examples of intake forms used by Dean’s office during the Depression.

LOS ANGELES AREA FEDERATION OF SETTLEMENTS AND NEIGHBORHOOD CENTERS, Inc.
Records l961-1975 - 8 inches

The Federation originally existed as an association of some two dozen small neighborhood centers in the Los Angeles area, several of which had been established in the first decade of the century. In l962 the Welfare Planning Council encouraged Federation leaders to prepare their group as a potential recipient of federal anti-poverty funds then beginning to flow from the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity. With its slogan -"A Nation of Neighbors", the Federation appeared to meet the announced criteria of Sargent Shriver, head of the War on Poverty, in that it was non-political, with a leadership largely made up of lay volunteers rather than professional social workers, and had close ties in the communities where its centers operated. With the assistance of the Welfare Planning Council, the Federation was incorporated in January, l963, and set about educating itself in the preparation of federal grant proposals.

In l965, with a tiny staff, it became the delegate agency for three large anti-poverty programs overseeing the headlong operations of Headstart, Teen Post, and the Neighborhood Adult Participation Project(NAPP). At the height of this activity the Los Angeles Federation received letters of praise and congratulation from the National Federation of Settlements, together with a warning "not to become a tool of the OEO." In mid l967, the exhausted Los Angeles Federation resigned as delegate agency for Teen Post and NAPP, both of which had struggled with extraordinary problems, and returned to its former settlement work and usual task as an advocate for needed social services. The Federation was determined to no longer serve as "a provider of purchased services". In l976 it became the Greater Los Angeles Section of the California State Association of Settlements and Neighborhood Centers.

Included in the collection are Executive Board and Organizing Committee minutes, annual reports, rosters, organizational charts, budgets, proposals, job descriptions, sub committee, task force, and agency reports, correspondence, legal papers, and materials covering the incorporation of the group, its history, and its purposes. The records reflect the initially unsophisticated Federation's developing relationships with the Welfare Planning Council, the Chamber of Commerce, United Way, major local voluntary agencies, various representatives of the federal government in Los Angeles including the Economic & Youth Opportunities Agency, and its own national organization and member neighborhood centers. Overall the collection conveys some sense of the chaotic overnight improvisation of the War On Poverty's programs in the region, their heyday of innovation and optimism, and their decline when the original impetus was spent.

MCKIBBEN, Rev. Dr. R.A.
Papers. 1938-55 - 1 foot

Rev. Dr. Robert A. McKibben was Executive Director of the All Nations Foundation and Pastor of the Church of All Nations in Los Angeles from l927 until 1952, when he resigned reluctantly to accept appointment by the Methodist Episcopal Church to its National Board of Missions. McKibben's correspondence relating to the All Nations Foundation, including his uniquely effective fund raising letters, and his papers on church social work programs, are to be found with the records of that agency. Papers in this collection reflect his wide interests, his acquaintance with leading social welfare administrators throughout the West, and his national and international connections with social work associations, particularly those concerned with the developing specialty of group work, and with issues from the provision of services to youth, to narcotics education, and international student exchange programs. An influential figure in Los Angeles, McKibben was president of the Los Angeles County Coordinating Council's Executive Board, and a Vice-President of the Council of Social Agencies, on whose Executive Committee he served for many years.

METROPOLITAN RECREATION AND YOUTH SERVICES COUNCIL
Papers 1944-72 10 INCHES

The impetus for the organization of the Metropolitan Recreation and Youth Services Council, like that for innovative programs such as the Los Angeles Youth Project, and Special Services for Groups, came from the notorious "Zoot Suit" disturbances of May,l943, when minority youth gangs fought back against attacks made by servicemen stationed in the area. While Angelenos were alarmed by the violence, and disturbed by national media attention paid to it as evidence of racial tension, the Los Angeles Welfare Federation and its Council of Social Agencies acknowledged that social services for youth in the most disadvantaged and congested areas of the city had been seriously neglected. Preoccupied with war production, and plans for post-war industrial "reconversion", Los Angeles had allowed many of its public recreation facilities to deteriorate beyond repair. A first step for the Metropolitan Recreation and Youth Services Council was to commission - with difficulty given the lack of qualified civilian manpower during the war - the detailed city-wide survey of its surviving recreational assets. In the post war years, while city and county government engaged in capital projects including freeway and airport construction, the Metropolitan Recreation and Youth Services Council worked with private and public agencies, including the Los Angeles City Board of Education and the City Recreation and Parks Commission, to meet the recommendations of its Sorenson Survey Report.

The collection reflects in papers, minutes, and correspondence, the condition of the region's parks, playgrounds and beaches at the end of World War II, and the efforts of Council members to gather expert advice and set priorities. (Notable here is committee correspondence with urban historian Lewis Mumford on the poor prognosis for good recreational values in "tower block" public housing, as then contemplated by Los Angeles City Council.)

The collection contains both volumes of the l946 Sorenson Survey, a group of reports put out by the Council from 1949-59, and a series of "Social Need and Desirability" studies of the recreational facilities and programs of various private agencies in the l960s. Also included are eight reports published by the Council in that decade dealing with aspects of recreation in such areas as mental health rehabilitation and the prevention and control of juvenile delinquency.

ECONOMIC AND YOUTH OPPORTUNITIES AGENCY OF GREATER LOS ANGELES
Records 1963-70. - 1 foot

The Youth Opportunities Board (YOB) was established in Los Angeles County in l962 - as a Joint Powers agency incorporating school, probation, and social services - to address high levels of both juvenile delinquency and unemployment among out-of-school youth. Three volumes of a l963 YOB proposal, in the collection, to remedy "youth failure" in South Central Los Angeles, reflect a then typical approach to multiple problems in impoverished communities.

One year later, the federal War On Poverty was launched. The Economic Opportunity Act of l964 provided extraordinary funds for poverty programs and called for "maximum participation of the poor themselves", a requirement disqualifying the YOB as an all-professional body with little community representation. Changing its name to the Economic and Youth Opportunity Agency (EYOA), the group nonetheless served as a coordinating agency and prime contractor for many federal anti-poverty programs. This small, rich collection covers in outline the activities of one EYOA "delegate agency", the venerable Los Angeles Federation of Settlements and Neighborhood Centers, as it struggled to establish and control l20 supposedly self-directing "Teen Post" centers for disadvantaged youth.

The collection, which reflects the crisis atmosphere and ad hoc organization of the period, also contains material on the early development of Head Start, the convening of a Social Work Advisory Council for EYOA, and the beginning of the Neighborhood Adult Participation Project. Of particular interest is a 1965 Teen Post "decision-making chart" showing the tortuous lines of communication between the federal government, EYOA, the Los Angeles Federation of Settlements, Teen Post community "sponsors", and over 250 poverty area residents employed as Teen Post staff.

NEIGHBORHOOD ADULT PARTICIPATION PROJECT, INC.
Records 1962-78 - 1 foot 6 inches

Opal Jones, author of much of the content of this collection, was executive director of NAPP from its inception in April, l965 at the Avalon Center in Watts, until her resignation in l97? Initially funded by the Office of Economic Opportunity, NAPP had become by l976 the largest and oldest poverty program in Los Angeles County, delivering services to over 50,000 residents each year at 14 community centers. NAPP began operations as a Community Action Program funded under Title II of the Economic Opportunity Act of l964, with the primary purpose of providing training and employment opportunities for adults in ten poverty areas identified by the Welfare Planning Council. Organized with extraordinary speed, over a four month period, the project was one of the first and most ambitious "War On Poverty" programs in Los Angeles County. Apart from its employment component, NAPP was designed to conform with the federal edict of "maximum feasible participation" of the poor themselves by using thousands of previously unemployed "indigenous aides" as trainee community workers is an effort to bootstrap up from poverty both aides and the communities they served.

The collection reflects the idealism and optimism of the era, and a pervasive dissatisfaction with the past performance of professional social workers in the neighborhoods. Also apparent in the records are the organizational problems of a project dispersed over a dozen or more "outposts" across the county, and continuous personnel difficulties, including bitter conflicts over turf and funding between Mexican American and African American groups. A large section of the collection consists of the imaginative and creative training materials produced by executive director Opal Jones, who managed to convey information with a minimum of text and maximum use of illustration.

CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF SCHOOL SOCIAL WORKERS
PAPERS 1927-1974 - 2.25 ft

The collection also includes papers from four predecessor organizations: National Association of Social Workers (Los Angeles Chapter, School Social Work Section), National Association of School Social Workers, American Association of Visiting Teachers, California Association of Visiting Teachers.

Visiting teachers, who neither taught nor did much visiting but were essentially school-based social workers, appeared in American schools in the first decade of the century with the beginning of compulsory school attendance. The first school-financed visiting teacher was employed by the Hartford, Connecticut, school system in l908. In l9l9, eighty such workers, employed in ten eastern cities, established the National Association Visiting Teachers and Home Visitors. In l923 the Commonwealth Fund of New York supported, as part of a delinquency prevention program, a three-year demonstration of visiting teacher work in cooperation with 30 school districts across the country, including the district for the then relatively small and remote city of San Diego, California. The San Diego school district, which already employed a psychologist in l920 and would be a pioneer in the use of psychiatrists, retained its visiting teacher and hired another when the Commonwealth Fund's demonstration project came to an end. By l935 it had a well equipped Bureau of Child Reference and Counsel with a staff of l5, including visiting teachers, guidance and attendance workers, home tutors and speech therapists.

The collection, initially, presents itself as an interstate letter record of the early development of school social work, consisting of the professional correspondence of some half dozen San Diego visiting teachers as they wrote continuously to their counterparts across the nation in an effort to maintain a network of ties with the National Association of Visiting Teachers and its scattered but strongly committed membership. References are frequent in this early correspondence to "the cause" and to the "the great development of public social work." These early school social workers were highly educated women, many with both teaching and social work credentials. Their misleading job title was apparently adopted because they identified with teachers as professionals, and in the l920's saw this association as more advantageous than any emphasis on the less developed field of social work. They usually practiced alone as caseworkers, without supervision, and often in crisis situations. Their letters convey their conviction as to the value of their specialty, and the energy they brought to the task of its development.

The collection covers, in correspondence form, the struggle of the visiting teachers to gain recognition from both educators and social workers, to survive the Depression years, and to find a university anywhere in California willing and able to provide school social work education comparable to that available in the eastern and mid western states. After World War II, when problems arising from disruption in lives of school children led to a sharp increase in the hiring of school social workers, the collection begins to reflect the changing concerns of the San Diego visiting teachers, and their National Association in New York, as they focus on certification, and on appropriate credentials in their specialization.

From l956, when school social workers in Southern California joined the National Association of Social Workers, the papers reflect continuing preoccupation with the problem of credentials, and relationships with associations representing the interests of other pupil personnel workers. School social workers’ long legislative battle to get an acceptable credential requirement is well documented in the collection, as is also the effort of the California Association of School Social Workers, established in l966, to adjust to the new atmosphere and requirements of the schools in that era. . Apart from its extensive and idiosyncratic correspondence, the early part of the collection includes membership lists, conference records, reports, incorporation papers, curricula, course schedules, and newsletters. For the mid l950's formal memoranda and minutes begin to appear, together with committee rosters, policy statements, legislative materials, chronologies and newspaper clippings.

BOARD OF BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE EXAMINERS
in the California State Dept. of Consumer Affairs
Records 1976-82 - 1 ft 3 inches

These records were assembled by Professor Lola Selby of USC School of Social Work, who was appointed to the Board by Governor Edmund Brown Jr. in l976, where she served on the Social Work and Examinations Committees. In l968 the Board of Social Work Examiners was abolished and its funds and functions transferred to the short-lived Social Worker and Marriage Counselor Qualifications Board. In the same year Senate Bill 1224 provided for licensing of clinical social workers, with the designation LCSW required after June 21, 1969 for all clinical social workers in independent practice. Social workers who had earned the RSW administered by the Board of Social Work Examiners were "blanketed" into the LCSW program. Some 1,500 school social workers and others who did not consider their practice to be primarily clinical nevertheless chose to maintain their RSW standing. But the program declined over the next decade and in l979, when no more than 50 applicants took the RSW examination, the legislature effectively killed social worker registration by denying further funding.

Meanwhile, in l970, Assembly Bill 2393 created the Board of Behavioral Science Examiners (BBSE) to supersede the Social Worker and Marriage Counselor Qualifications Board. The new, eleven member Board was also responsible for the licensing of educational psychologists. In l971 the BBSE ceased to operate under the old Board of Professional and Vocational Standards and became a part of the "Healing Arts" division of the State Dept. of Consumer Affairs. This Department oversaw some 38 regulatory bodies which in turn were responsible for over one million occupational licenses. Governor Brown, intent on reducing the size of state government, announced a plan to invoke Sunset laws to end all regulatory boards that could not demonstrate a clear contribution to public welfare and safety.

The papers reflect a period of active reform in the affairs of the BBSE, following events of l975 when the Governor's office received strong complaints about the Board's administration of its examinations from many candidates, and also from the California Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) and the California Association of Marriage and Family Counselors. Criticism centered on the relevance of the content of written examinations to actual practice, and on the inadequate preparation, unprofessional demeanor, and "consensus" grading practices of Commissioners of the oral examinations. There were also complaints that Commissioners discriminated against applicants on the bases of gender, race, and age, that the examination as a whole was biased in favor of the psychotherapeutic model in clinical social work, and that the Board was unreasonably slow in notifying applicants about their eligibility to take the examination. Dissatisfaction had become so pronounced by l975 that the oral section of the examination that fall was canceled at the last minute, and delayed indefinitely.

The collection reflects the Board's attempts to rectify the situation, with a major re-organization of its administrative regulations occupying much of l976, and with training seminars for oral examiners introduced, together with a rule that audiotapes be made of all their examination sessions. The Board had no funds with which to employ outside expertise in the reconfiguration of the LCSW examinations, having always relied on the barely-compensated efforts of experienced social workers and social work educators in the writing of exam questions. Volunteer spirit in these groups was clearly flagging, but the Board did make a concerted effort to improve the relevance of exam questions, holding workshops in their composition and particularly inviting the participation of experienced African-American and Latino social workers.

Members of minority racial groups, by l976, had begun to complain that they were culturally disadvantaged by the character of the LCSW examinations, and some attempts were made by Board members to investigate this charge of unfairness. But no demographic studies had yet been made of applicants for the examination, so no meaningful analysis could be made of outcomes for differing groups - even if the Board had considered making such analyses, which it evidently did not. Meanwhile the State of California had begun to interest itself in affirmative action programs for its own employees, which included state regulatory boards and their staffs, and in the needs of linguistic minorities in their communications with state government. The Board was evidently startled in l977 by a question from the Department of Consumer Affairs about its readiness to allow candidates for the LCSW examination to take the test in a language other than English.

While it moved ahead with improvements in its licensing function, and dealt with ongoing concerns in the areas of credentialing, accreditation, discipline and ethics, the Board had also to respond to issues raised in the legislature. For the period represented, major topics included the use of medical hypnosis by clinical social workers, the use of the terms "psychotherapy" and "marriage counseling" in professional advertising, and a new and contested requirement that all licensed social workers take a graduate level course in Human Sexuality. (In searching for an acceptable model, the Board found that many medical schools offered no such instruction to their students.)

The collection - which includes correspondence, minutes and memoranda, legislative, regulatory and statistical materials, reports, and papers - reflects fully the activities of the Board in relation to its professional constituency and to the Department of Consumer Affairs, but is revealingly uninformative about the Board's dealing with actual "consumers" in the state of California.

COMPETENCE CERTIFICATION BOARD
of the National Association of Social Workers
Records 1979-82 - 5 inches

The Competence Certification Board (CCB), in the period covered by these records, had as its principle responsibility the oversight of NASW's Academy of Certified Social Workers (ACSW) program. The ACSW exam, given twice yearly, was begun in l973, resulting by l979 in an ACSW membership of 47,000, with approximately 4,000 new members admitted each year. NASW had originally set up CCB as a separate corporation in l961, to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest in conducting examinations which would give credentials only to NASW members. In the early l970's, before ACSW examinations began, CCB's separate incorporation was dissolved by NASW, in a move that remained controversial in l979.

NASW was then the only major professional group to collect specific data on the exam performance of ethnic and racial groups. Since l974 it had been aware that African American candidates for the ACSW exam had a 50% failure rate, as compared to a 15% rate for caucasians. NASW was unable to isolate or explain reasons for the high black failure rate, but CCB was nevertheless scheduled to report on its findings for the first time in l979. The collection reflects the anxiety felt by CCB, both in making the failure rate public, and in devising some means to reduce it by adjusting the character of its ACSW examination in consultation with the professional testing service employed.

Since African-American candidates as a group were older and had more years of experience in social work, it was decided to base one third of exam scores on experience and professional references. This change resulted in a 75% black pass rate, but led to other problems including a charge that the examination had become too easy, and that it was largely irrelevant to actual social work practice. By l981 the Board was preoccupied with "rescaling" concerns, and had decided to bolster the reputation of its exam through the expensive and time-consuming new process of Validation Research, with the assistance of consultants and examination technology specialists.

Faced with a need for new expertise in testing procedures, the Board prioritized its work and decided to defer consideration of specialization in the profession, and of continuing education for social workers. But it was required, by vocal groups within NASW, to pay attention to the long-delayed concerns of Baccalaureate Social Workers (BSW) in the area of credentials. NASW did not know, and apparently was unable to discover, how many BSWs members it had acquired since this group was admitted to membership, against considerable opposition, in l973. As "entry level" workers who filled many positions nationally in the hard- pressed public social services agencies, BSW wanted the recognition and status that they believed some sort of professional credential would entail. The collection reflects, particularly in correspondence, an opening phase of sharp disagreement in NASW about the BSW's desire for a credential. This was seen by some as a threat to the professional status of social workers with MSW and ACSW designations in that a BSW credential was thought likely to confuse the public and devalue advanced degrees. The papers include minutes, memoranda, statistical materials, correspondence, and reports.

LOS ANGELES COUNCIL OF SOCIAL AGENCIES
Records. 1926-1944 - 2 feet.

The Council of Social Agencies was established in l929 as the planning arm of the Welfare Federation of the Los Angeles Area, succeeding the much smaller Social Welfare Committee appointed by the Federation in l925 when it began to operate the Community Chest. The Council was composed initially of representatives of some l00 private agencies, of whom 15 percent elected to remain independent of Chest support, and of approximately 30 representatives of public welfare agencies. The Council's intentions were to raise standards of care at the agencies, to engage in long-term planning for the region, and to foster cooperation in budgetary matters between the Community Chest and the agencies. A further expressed goal was "to develop a better public understanding of social work in Los Angeles."

Included in the collection are by-laws, executive committee minutes from l929-32 and from l934-44, annual reports from l936-44, survey division reports and statistics, functional group reports and classifications, correspondence, and studies made by the Council's active research department. The collection reflects the professional vigor of the Council as it faced, from its inception, the emergencies of the Depression - in a state with a three-year residency law governing eligibility for public assistance. In the l940s, when Los Angeles became a center for defense production, the region experienced severe social and family dislocations. The records contain much historical data about Los Angeles during the Depression, about official and unofficial efforts to provide for destitute, unemployed people in a region full of "technical non-residents", for transients, and for the 20% of the population estimated then to be in need of some level of assistance. The collection reflects the rapid development of social work in this era, and also the effects of federal relief policies, both in averting catastrophe and in modifying the roles of public and private local agencies.

SPECIAL SERVICE FOR GROUPS
Records 1948-1977 5 inches

Special Service For Groups was begun in l945 as a unit within the Los Angeles Youth Project, which in turn began in 1943 to fill unmet service needs revealed by the circumstances of the "Zoot Suit" disturbances. Special Service for Groups was the first concerted attempt by Los Angeles social workers to work, at the street level, with delinquent youth gangs. These difficult groups - typically found in severely disadvantaged and underserved minority communities - had no interest in conventional agency youth programs. Those who provided such programs, such as the YMCA, found the gangs not only hard-to-reach but also "too hard to handle" on a continuing basis. A l953 job description for staff members of Special Services For Groups noted that candidates would need "an ability to maintain personal morale in the face of severe hostility or regression on the part of groups or individuals with whom they work."

The failure of the Youth Project in its first year of operation to make any headway with hard-to-reach groups indicated that a new approach was needed, and Special Service for Groups was established, as a somewhat anomalous and experimental group, with an initial budget of $28,000. Its success in the new field was recognized in l952 when the unit was incorporated as a separate private agency funded by the Community Chest.

The collection contains material on the history and development of the agency, its attention to minority ethnic group issues, and its efforts to recruit and train social workers from these groups. A series of research papers put out by the agency in the mid l960s reflects the development of its specialized skills, and statistical material from the l970s demonstrate its fund raising prowess in era when hard-core delinquent gangs had become a national concern. Of particular interest is some documentation of community complaints against the agency in the late l950s, when its status was high in the profession. Also included are transcripts of interviews conducted at that time by representative of the Welfare Council with Special Service for Groups staff members, evidently in an attempt to interpret and justify the often unconventional methods used by these workers in dealing with their clients.

TIDBALL, ANEITA
of United Community Defense Services, Inc.
Papers 1950-56 (Bulk l951-53) - 5 inches

Aneita Tidball, a nationally known social worker and former Executive Secretary of the Travelers Aid Society of Chicago, was Field Representative for United Community Defense Services (UCDS) in the western states from l951 to l953. UCDS was a federation of 15 large national agencies created in l951 to assist undeveloped communities in meeting social service needs created by defense mobilization for the Korean War. It functioned as a private cooperative fund raising agency working, in most instances, with local Community Chests. Tidball's three year assignment was to travel throughout the West, with a strong focus on California, and identify rapidly growing communities which might benefit from the coordinating and consultative services of UCDS. One of UCDS's objectives in l951 was the promotion of a national community development program. Many small and sometimes remote communities had been adversely impacted by the rapid, unplanned establishment of large defense installations. Social welfare problems were beginning to be apparent, particularly in San Diego and Los Angeles County where the largest number of federal defense contracts had been awarded and where enlargement of the industrial base was proceeding at high speed. Tidball's energetic and vivid reports on the state of the West - from the new steel town of Fontana, to a tiny community at China Lake, to congested metropolitan areas such as Oakland - together with accounts of her interviews with local leaders of all sorts, and her regular summaries of local newspaper content, comprise the bulk of the informative material in the collection.

WELFARE COUNCIL OF METROPOLITAN LOS ANGELES
Records 1945 - 1954 - 1 ft 6 inches

In 1944, after a four year period of self-study and fact finding, the Los Angeles Council of Social Agencies restructured itself as the Welfare Council of Metropolitan Los Angeles. The new name apparently reflected the former Council's intention to reduce the influence of social agency executives in the Welfare Federation generally by increasing lay participation and opening up Council membership to with groups and individuals with special expertise and interest in community service. With the end of World War II in prospect, the Council expected to reduce its crisis approach to management of community problems, and to focus more on long term planning and research.

Records of the Welfare Federation for this period indicate that the l944 restructuring did not help to reduce either dissension over budget allocations or the cumbersome procedures of the Council’s many large and slow-moving committees. A Citizens' Study Commission, set up by the Welfare Federation in l950, recommended that the Federation and the Council become separate entities. By-laws were drawn up accordingly for a new independent planning organization, which was incorporated in November, l953, as the Welfare Planning Council.

The collection reflects the planning and research activity of the Welfare Council rather than its administrative processes. Included are over 40 studies and surveys made by the Research Division, with reports on the development of 65 study areas selected within Los Angeles Community Chest territory as bases for social planning. Also collected are proceedings of conferences and seminars sponsored by the Council, a series of special reports on topics of contemporary concern, and a group of papers covering the first decade of the Los Angeles Youth Project. .

WELFARE FEDERATION OF THE LOS ANGELES AREA
Operating the Community Chest
Records 1925-1962. - 10 inches

The Welfare Federation of Los Angeles Area, sometimes referred to as the Los Angeles Community Federation, was incorporated on March 12, l924, to serve "as a central bureau through which all funds for charity, relief, and welfare work may be solicited, collected, held and disbursed." Shortly thereafter, on May 29th, l924, the Los Angeles Community Chest was incorporated, with the backing of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, after two years of conflict among leaders of private social service agencies, many of whom feared that the future of welfare services in the region was likely to be controlled, through the Chest, by Los Angeles' business community. The first 27 volunteer directors of the board of the Welfare Federation were philanthropic leading citizens, with some experience in the administration of charitable institutions, who stepped forward at a critical moment when other leadership had failed. On January 2nd, 1925, with an encouraging fund of $2.5 million raised in the Chest's first campaign, the Welfare Federation began operations.

Membership in the Federation was open to all agencies licensed by the Social Services Commission to solicit funds for charitable purposes in Los Angeles. The Federation was anxious to have representation from as many agencies as possible so as to achieve some consensus of opinion on topics of general concern to the social work community. In the first year after its incorporation the Federation's research department discovered over one hundred privately supported charities in Los Angeles whose existence had previously been unknown to any official body. These small agencies were, in effect, answerable to no one so long as they refrained from public fund-raising. Only those agencies who agreed to forego their own individual fund-raising efforts, and to open their operations to Federation inspection and direction, were eligible to share in the money raised in Community Chest campaigns. Many large agencies, and particularly those with national and international connections, such as the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and the Y.M.C.A. were unwilling to become Chest agencies on such terms and continued with their own year-round charitable appeals. The Federation attempted to reach agreement with fund-raising agencies so that their activities did not coincide with the Chest's annual campaigns. Although it was highly influential, the Federation had no legal authority to prevent individual fund-raisers from operating in a manner likely to detract from the effectiveness of the Community Chest.

Included in the collection are early statistical analyses and annual reports reflecting the development of the Federation's budgeting and allocation procedures, documentation of chest campaigns, and interpretive materials produced during the Depression, when Angelenos frequently expected the Federation to provide more emergency relief than was afforded by the often meager proceeds from Chest campaigns in those years. The collection also contains much material on personnel practices, job and service classifications, and pay plans for the Federation's member agencies. Among problems that troubled the Federation from its beginnings was the fact that many working Angelenos contributed to Chest campaigns in metropolitan areas of the city but lived in outlying suburbs where no Chest agencies provided services. The Federation therefore gave early consideration to questions of expansion or decentralization, and the collection records the beginning of joint budgeting with neighboring community chests. Minutes of some of the Federation's committees are to be found in the collection, including those of the Chest-Agency Co-Operation Committee which worked to reorganize the Federation during the population influx of the l950's.

Also present are materials reflecting the work of the Federation's research department as it produced maps, bibliographies, and reading lists for inquiring citizens, began a research library, and made studies of unmet service needs in the region. Of particular interest is a 1925 report on "Social Work With Families in Los Angeles", made by Carl de Schweinitz and Ruth Hill for the Welfare Federation under the direction of the American Association for Family Social Work. Also noteworthy is the candid l951 report from a Citizens' Study Committee on recommended changes in the management and functions of the Federation. Of curiosity interest are some long lists of harmless-sounding groups and associations supplied to Los Angeles social welfare agencies in l955 by the House Un-American Activities Committee, with a stern warning that these groups be scrupulously avoided as "subversive".

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA BUILDING FUNDS
Records 1961-1992 - 3ft 9inches This capital fund was established at the end of World War II by Southern California business leaders who recognized that the rapidly increasing population of the area could not adequately be served by health and welfare institutions operating in facilities that had already been outgrown and outworn during the Depression and war years. In the 38 years of its existence the fund disbursed over $26 million for construction purposes. Corporate mergers and acquisitions eroded its historic funding base in the l980s, and when contributions dropped sharply during the business recession of the early l990s fund members voted to discontinue the program, effective November 1, l992.

COMBS, CARMEN
Papers 1923-79 (bulk l950s) - 2 ft 11 inches

Carmen Combs was a l927 graduate of Yale Law School who began her career in Los Angeles by combining practice with a small firm and volunteer work as chief of the busy Domestic Relations Department of the city's Legal Aid Clinic. In l937 she was appointed as Referee in Los Angeles Juvenile Court, where she should serve both regularly and on an "as needed" basis for the next 35 years. Meanwhile she worked continuously on extraordinary array of committees, commissions, and research projects devoted to the improvement of juvenile justice and the treatment of troubled or neglected children. Earl Warren first appointed Combs to his Governor's Advisory Committee on Children and Youth in l947, a position which she retained through the governorships Goodwin Knight and Pat Brown. As Chair of the Special Study Commission on Juvenile Crime, sponsored in l957 by the Governor's Advisory Committee, she wrote an influential report on "California Children in Detention and Shelter Care" and worked for its implementation on a formidably analytical "Subcommittee on Structure and Organization". On the Special Study Commission, Combs directed what was described as "one of the most comprehensive surveys of the administration of juvenile justice ever made". This lead to the repeal of California's existing juvenile court law, much of which had been in place since l913, and the passage of a new law, effective on September 15, l961, substantially embodying the recommendations of the Commission.

Combs' skills as a consummate committee member, at the highest levels, and her skills as advocate in letters and presentations to state and county legislative bodies, are apparent throughout the collection, as is her facility as a collaborator. Scattered through the files is her densely detailed and often witty correspondence with contemporary leaders in the juvenile justice field in California, such as Karl Holton and Heman Stark, and with judges and officials across the country to whom she wrote without hesitation in search of information. In Los Angeles, Combs worked particularly for improvement in public provision of protective services for abused and neglected children. Her concern for the conditions of juvenile detention evidently stemmed from a l955 visit to the Los Angeles County Jail, following which she wrote a strong letter of protest to the County Board of Supervisors about the practice of routinely housing adolescent boys awaiting disposition of their cases with adult criminals. Combs served on the Los Angeles Grand Jury in l956 and l966, was chairman of the Los Angeles County Youth Committee, and of the Committee on Protective Services of the Los Angeles Bureau of Public Assistance, and her name appears on the rosters of many other short lived committees. As a career volunteer, among officials and politicians, her name on such listings is often followed by the designation - "Citizen At Large".

The collection, reflecting Combs' interests in many aspects of juvenile law beyond those in which she had personal involvement, includes reports, conference proceedings, committee minutes, studies, seminar and institute materials, pamphlets, Combs' own lawyerly analyses of problems and topics, legislation, speech transcripts, and memoranda to Court Referees. Of historical interest are a series of studies on juvenile delinquency and probation published by the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco in the 1920s, a 1936 report to the public entitled "Your Los Angeles County Juvenile Court", and a 1938 judge's call for reformed legislation entitled "An Appeal on Behalf of the Childhood of California."


	Last updated: June 13, 2005 \| Send comments & questions to slac@usc.edu. \| © 2001 University of Southern California