The Spirit of Social Service

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The Employees of Social Service

The pioneers of social service quickly became aware that the success of their work depends on the preparation of the employees to whom the task of performing these services is entrusted.

Thus a new profession arose — or perhaps it is more correct for me to say a new aptitude: the aptitude for performing social services.

The countries spread across this part of the world, and especially the Arab countries among them, are distinguished by a traditional solidarity among individuals — meaning that the family — and this word "family" is taken here in its broad sense, the one denoted by the Arabic word "al" — is what has always shouldered all the undeniable responsibilities toward every one of its members. These responsibilities were soon shared by the charitable associations attached to the religious communities. And although this form of aid and assistance still exists, it has lately become clear that it is no longer sufficient the moment it must face modern institutions such as juvenile courts. For employees driven by mere mercy and love of good works — and nothing, in fact, is more dangerous than mercy for mercy's sake — have no qualification for understanding cases of criminality with their many complex aspects. Yet it is only now, after long delay in that field, that we have begun to feel the need for preparing social employees, as the United States, Belgium, France, and all the other countries did before us — countries that felt this need fifty years or more before we felt it.

A — The Preparation of Social Specialists — The Qualities They Must Possess

Women social specialists, like men social specialists, are now prepared in special schools devoted to that purpose, in which the course of study usually lasts two years. The purpose of this study is to prepare whoever takes up social service to understand the basic principles of which human character is composed. The method is to explain the deviations, the emotions, and the deficiencies that afflict human nature, by way of the science of education, psychology, preventive medicine, mental hygiene, and the like, together with an explanation of the basic principles on which the structure of economic and social life rests, such as the sciences of human geography, working conditions, the household budget, housing, the organization of leisure time, etc.

This theoretical instruction is completed by practical training — that is, a kind of actual exercise which helps either to confirm the information previously acquired by means of tangible reality, or to correct that information, to modify it, or to refute it; for similarity is inconceivable except in aggregates of things, whereas the human individual is unique of his kind.

The social specialists formed in this way are the qualified working staff.

It is obvious that these specialists must be chosen according to certain special conditions. The candidate for this task must possess a complete aptitude, for the essential quality to be developed in him is the capacity to understand the case that comes before him, and he will attain that only if he is endowed with the gift of sympathy. The social specialist cannot continue in his task and succeed in it unless he is granted a great deal of "patient forbearance," because his work in many cases gives him the appearance of an intruder concerning himself with what is none of his business and with what does not involve him. He must therefore begin by winning the confidence of others, and he will not attain that so long as the person to whom the services are rendered, or who is to be helped and relieved, sees in the social specialist's work and his presence near him nothing but the effects of compassion and mercy. It is the social specialist's duty to convince those to whom he renders his services that he is truly capable of serving them. He must be their personal champion, who can always settle their problems if they turn to him for that.

This is why these social specialists, however much ability and skill they may have in their work, find themselves liable to have their services refused or their advice not followed in the circles in which they work. And that is because these circles are not their own circles. Therefore we always try to join to these qualified specialists assistants chosen from the very circles in which the social service is performed. Among the virtues of this system is that it makes it easier to understand the cases that arise, by removing the feeling of suspicion or dislike which springs up in most people when they see a face foreign to them intervening in their problems and trying to console their wounds or lighten their pains.

It is not necessary for these assistants to have received the basic instruction or the theoretical formation necessary for the qualified specialists. This lack in them is made up for by their constant presence in the work and their wide participation in it. For it is they who can detect the harm that is about to burst forth — such as discord among the members of a family, the head of the family losing his work, or the striking of sickness or infirmity, and so on — and report the case to the woman social specialist; and thanks to the assistants the means of prevention become more plentiful and more effective.

In this way social service — which by virtue of its function is charged with diagnosing the case of deviation and setting it in its proper place within the whole of the necessary reforms proposed for correcting the deviation, if not for removing it — can do its work. And here I should like to give an example to make my idea clear:

It often happens that the absence of a school, or the height of school fees, leads to the children of the village or the quarter being left neglected in the streets. If the social center concerned with the affairs of criminals takes it upon itself to call attention to this situation, overstepping thereby — if only in appearance — the bounds of its competence, it aims through that at achieving the distant purpose for which all the social centers are established, the purpose of which we have already spoken above. And we should like to say again here that it consists essentially in the striving to create the environment fit for the flourishing and growth of the human personality. This is what work in the social centers has taught us:

First: "Every people has a kind of criminals who correspond to its conditions." And second: "Every one of us, or most of us generally speaking, can — by what the social body, or the environment in which we live, stamps upon him." "Siji" expressed this best some fifty years ago when he said: "The things of the spirit are themselves things bound to the body."

If we carried all these truths over to the scale of an individual case, we would find them plain in the plea recently made by the lawyer Maître Baudet, when he pleaded, on the 21st of last November, for the young student Pauline Dubuisson, aged twenty-two springs, at her trial on the charge of killing her lover. This lawyer succeeded in saving the accused woman's life and sparing her the death sentence thanks to those arguments which he summed up at the close of his plea, and which we give here in their own words. He said: "I ask of you, on her behalf, pardon for her. Pardon for her, for the sake of all those fathers who beget children and believe they are raising those children well, while they leave behind of them nothing but creatures in their own image; pardon for the sake of those fathers who give life to their children and then pass close beside them without seeing them."

From this it is clear that in the matter of crime we must not content ourselves with enacting laws, however precise and perfect those laws may be. Without social service organized according to the principles we have set out, we shall obtain nothing but punishments imposed and hardened criminals turned out by the prisons. For the law, by virtue of its function, has a general character, while the aim we seek to achieve through social prevention requires us to work to protect all criminals, to reform them, and to fit them for an honorable life; for they are in fact victims before they are criminals.

In 1940 the Union for the Protection of Juveniles in Lebanon asked the Ministry of Justice to work for the creation of a special bureau for the affairs of juvenile criminals. The Union obtained the fulfillment of this request in 1944. It then asked for the creation of an institute of reform and education, and obtained it in 1947. Finally it asked for the creation of a juvenile court, and obtained it in 1948. The Union carries on social service among the criminals while they serve their sentences and afterward. The employees who performed this work for it were at first drawn from among nurses and visitors; today they are women social specialists holding a license for this kind of work from the Lebanese School of Social Training. This school was founded in the month of September 1949, and it has lately been able to prepare the necessary number of social specialists, of whom the country's need grows greater every day. You will find, ladies and gentlemen, among the papers of this study, the detailed program of the instruction given by this institute. And it is my duty to point to the efforts being made by the Ministry of Social Affairs, with the assistance of the United Nations, to establish a center for the theoretical and practical preparation of the official social specialists and the assistants. We hope this center will begin its activity as soon as possible, so that we may have available the full number of these assistants, upon whose shoulders rests the foundation of all the social services.

A republican decree was recently issued restricting the title of official woman social specialist to the graduates of the Lebanese School of Social Service alone. We look to the social center, and especially to the Ministry of Social Affairs, for continuous work to complete this beginning and to establish this system firmly, and especially for work to define the competences of the social specialists. Perhaps the time is near when we shall see all the charitable associations, the great concerns, and the public administrations concerned confine the granting of the posts of women social specialists, from among those engaged in social questions, to those women who fulfill the conditions laid down in this system.

The Social Inquiry

Since social service has been organized in the manner we have seen, the role of the women social investigators begins before the judge from the moment the preparation of the inquiry is entrusted to them.

This inquiry must supply the judge with precise and objective elements concerning information on the cases he is called upon to examine, and to which the juvenile's welfare is bound.

The woman social investigator makes the acquaintance of her small client for the first time at the police station when he is arrested; then she goes in his company before the examining magistrate, after she has calmed the fright of the child, who has grown at ease with her. After the juvenile has been questioned, the investigator summons his family to her office if he is released; otherwise she promises him that she will visit him in prison if he is taken there. After that the woman social investigator carries out her researches and her inquiry — and it is a social inquiry, not a police investigation. The difference between them lies in the nature of this inquiry: the investigation the police conduct aims at seizing the accused in order to preserve the social order disturbed by the occurrence of the crime, whereas the social inquiry may end in uncovering the criminal and in arriving at a knowledge of the human being who must be reformed — that is, whose confidence in his dignity and whose feeling of his own humanity must be restored to him. And this is a special work which only a human being can render to his fellow human being.

If the social inquiry sometimes leads to the sentence which the courts pronounce, it must always lead to the reform of the person sentenced and the straightening of his crookedness.

Thanks to the mastery and devotion in work shown by our most outstanding woman social specialist, Miss Georgette Abu Samra — who will be among those present at the current study session — the Union for the Protection of Juveniles was able in 1952 to carry out 461 inquiries for 461 delinquents.

What is the attitude the investigator must take when he wishes to help those persons who are the subject of his inquiry?

He must respect people — there are questions that may not be put, and questions that may be put only with a certain caution, and he must refrain from embarrassing questions — if he knows how to share with those he questions their cares, their difficulties, and their pains. He must not believe that he knows everything in advance, but must remain always alert, noticing every sign, seeing every phenomenon, and hearing every whisper connected with the subject of the inquiry he is conducting. He must cut down his questions as far as he can, for the best statements are those given without prompting or interrogation. He must be patient, for among the qualities of the true social investigator are patience, caution, and watchfulness. He must not content himself with approximate statements when it is in his power to obtain precise ones — an easy matter once the investigator arms himself with patience and long forbearance. He must care most of all for the quality of the statements he obtains, not their quantity. And when he obtains statements that agree in their substance, he must make certain that they do not agree in their source. Among the qualities of the true social investigator are orderliness in work and care in the classification of his records. He must be acquainted with the accepted technical methods and use them, without believing that they suffice and succeed in all cases; for however powerful they may be, they can never stand in the stead of soundness of mind and intelligence, nor take the place of the psychological and moral qualities with which the social investigator must be adorned.