Homemaker Service: Its Contribution to the Mentally and Emotionally Ill; Study to Be Based on the Cases of the Buffalo Family Service Society

Hopkins Agatha Francis, Fordham University

Abstract

Since the nineteenth century family agencies have been expressing through their evolving casework program their conviction that the protection of society requires the preservation of family life. Responding to the recognition that family life contains its peculiar weaknesses and strengths, casework agencies have developed ever changing and expanding services designed to enhance these strengths and minimize these weaknesses.Death of a mother, desertion, temporary or prolonged absence because of physical or mental illness, are weaknesses that frequently render family life vulnerable.It was as a means of partially meeting these destructive forces that homemaker service came into being. The efficacy of this service has been demonstrated for almost thirty year. It provides for the maintenance of the family group with as little change as possible during a time when the mother is not in the home, or if in the home, is temporarily incapable of assuming her characteristic responsibilities. The service has been used chiefly to provide motherly care for children in their own home, when the death of the mother, her absence or illness has deprived the children of her attention and upset the normal tenor of the household.

Subject Area

Mental health|Individual & family studies|Social work

Recommended Citation

Francis, Hopkins Agatha, "Homemaker Service: Its Contribution to the Mentally and Emotionally Ill; Study to Be Based on the Cases of the Buffalo Family Service Society" (1951). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI30509615.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI30509615

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