Council for Human Services in New Jersey

The Council for Human Services in New Jersey, originally known as the New Jersey Conference of Charities and Correction (1) was founded in 1901. It was strongly supported by the New Jersey State Charities Aid Association, a semiofficial body which acted as an inspector of charitable institutions. Its purpose was to "bring together the hundreds of men and women who are dealing at first hand with the problems of human affliction and distress," and to show "the points of contact, and the need of co-operation between private benevolent agencies and public relief officers." (2) Over one hundred delegates attended the first conference in Trenton in 1902, where Emily E. Williamson of Elizabeth, secretary of the Charities Aid Association and advocate for children and prisoners, was elected president. During the early years of the Council's history, several distinguished figures in New Jersey social welfare served as presidents, including Edward R. Johnstone, executive director of the New Jersey Institution for the Feeble Minded at Vineland, penal reformer Caroline Wittpenn of Hoboken, and social settlement founder Cornelia Bradford of Jersey City.

For a quarter century, the main purpose of the Council was to hold the yearly conference. Early session topics included: public sanitation and hygiene, the relationship of immigration to dependency and crime, almshouse management, women in industry, and municipal and social responsibility for the mortality of children. During this period, the conference effectively brought together activists and intellectuals from all sectors of the social welfare community—state agencies, private charities, and religious organizations.

The Council was run by a President, Vice Presidents, Treasurer, Secretaries and an Executive Committee. Standing committees dealt with conference planning and with nominations. After 1905 the Commissioner of Charities and Correction sat ex officio on the Executive Committee and an Advisory Board and Auditing Committee were added. In December 1925, the Council was reorganized on a year-round basis with a full time Executive Secretary and an office in Newark. The revised constitution expanded the Council's purpose to include: Obtaining and disseminating information and data on social conditions and social service activities, and stimulating workers, institutions and agencies, both public and private in the improvement of their activities for social betterment. (3)

At this time, the Council had over six hundred members, including both individuals and organizations. It created ad hoc committees to research and report on issues as they arose, coordinated activities and promoted relationships among social work agencies, and monitored legislation dealing with social welfare. Chronically short of funds, however, the Council launched the first of many appeals in 1926.

In 1929, the Council's Interracial Committee conducted a statewide survey of African Americans in New Jersey in conjunction with the State Department of Institutions and Agencies, which had been founded in 1918. The Committee studied the health, welfare, and social, economic, and political status of African Americans in communities throughout the state, with a focus on the existing provisions for social services. The survey led to several publications: a detailed report— The Negro in New Jersey (1931), a pamphlet— The Negro: New Jersey's Twentieth Citizen (1932), and reports on individual communities.

The Council also prepared A Social Worker's Guide to Foreign Communities in New Jersey (1930), a directory of the many ethnic social service organizations in the state, and several brief studies that were published both as individual pamphlets and in the Council's monthly Bulletin, including: Advantages and Disadvantages of Federalized vs. Commission Form of State Welfare Organization (Bulletin, January 25, 1932); The Courts of New Jersey (April 14, 1934); and Brief Tentative Outline of the Social Security Act and New Jersey Statutes (October 1, 1935). The Council's Committee on Standards in Child Adoption published Standards for Child Placing Agencies (1932), in which it adapted national standards to the New Jersey context.

During this period, of course, the economic and social dislocation resulting from the Depression had a major impact on social services in the state. In fact, New Jersey was the first state to set up an Emergency Relief Administration, in October 1931, a year and a half before the Federal Emergency Relief Administration was established. (4) Leaders of the Council served on the Advisory Section on Social Welfare Problems to the New Jersey Emergency Relief Administration. As well as suggesting ways to coordinate and standardize the administration of relief in the state, the Advisory Section helped develop social work training courses for Administration workers at Dana College in Newark and Rutgers University Extension in New Brunswick. In 1934, the Council began to advocate the establishment of a school for social workers in New Jersey, a goal not achieved until the opening of the Graduate School of Social Work at Rutgers University in 1955.

In 1934, the chairman of the Committee on Social Work Training, Dr. Ellen Potter, was elected president of the Council. Ellen Potter (1871-1958), who had made her mark as an early woman physician, public administrator, and public health advocate, served as Director of Medicine at the State Department of Institutions and Agencies from 1930 to 1949. At the 1934 conference, the Council passed a resolution calling for an end to the ban on sending birth control information through the mail, which cost the support of some Catholic organizations. In spite of this opposition, under Potter's leadership the Council continued to support birth control and voluntary sterilization. During Potter's presidency, the Council also began to plan for the future administration of relief in New Jersey, anticipating the eventual demise of the state Emergency Relief Administration, which indeed ceased operations in 1936. It drew up a plan for a state public welfare department which would distribute relief through counties rather than through municipalities, which was eventually embodied in several legislative proposals.

During the Depression, contributions to the Council declined, and, in 1935, a bank called in a loan, leaving a balance of nine dollars in the organization's treasury. In 1937, the Council launched a major fundraising campaign, the Common Sense Appeal, which was moderately successful.

The Council's financial situation worsened, however, during the Second World War because of higher taxation and the competition from wartime charities. In general, committee work declined during this period, with the notable exceptions of the Child Welfare and Health Committees and their various subcommittees. In 1942, the Child Welfare Committee was reorganized to deal with issues related to defense, such as the need to provide day care for the children of women factory workers, violations of the 1940 Child Labor Law, and juvenile delinquency. At the same time, the Child Welfare Committee continued its regular program of research into the treatment of developmentally disabled children and facilities for the care of adolescents. The Health Committee addressed unsanitary conditions in areas around military bases and factories, which were crowded with migrants from other parts of the country. It conducted extensive surveys of public health administration in the state, contributing to the reorganization of the State Department of Health in 1946 and the establishment of a Division of Chronic Illness Control in 1952.

In the years following the war, the increase in the birth rate and continuing migration into the state led to an increase in case loads and institutional populations. The Council was extremely busy during this period, expanding its focus to include several new areas, such as the plight of displaced persons from Central Europe who had immigrated to New Jersey after the war. The work of the Council's Committee on Displaced Persons, in cooperation with Rutgers University and a grant from the East European Fund, led to the establishment of the New Jersey Resettlement Project for East European refugees in 1953.

Beginning in the mid-1940s, the Council's committees were also active in the area of mental health. The Mental Health Committee, founded in 1944, supported improved services and increased appropriations for the mentally ill and developmentally disabled, the establishment of the Interstate Compact on Mental Health (1957), the provision of special educational services for emotionally and socially maladjusted children, and the foundation of community mental health clinics. (5) In 1947, the Council brought together professionals and citizens interested in mental health and held a series of regional conferences leading to the formation of the New Jersey Association for Mental Health the following year. Under the leadership of Council President Elizabeth Boggs, who was on the Board of Directors of the American Association for Mental Deficiency, the Council supported legislation converting Bordentown Manual Training School into a school for the developmentally disabled. In 1961, Council President Marion Rieman served on the State Mental Health Study Commission.

The Council also continued campaigns which had originated in earlier decades. The Adoptions Committee, originally a subcommittee of Child Welfare, worked to improve and standardize adoption practices. It sought "to spread information regarding good adoption practice, encourage the use of adoption agencies, and work for the passage of the proposed adoption law." (6) Indeed the campaign contributed to the passage of the Adoption Law of 1953. The Council also continued to advocate the integration of state and local public assistance in New Jersey. (7)

In 1959, struck by the number of addicts living near its office in Newark, the Council formed a Drug Addiction Study Committee at a time when there was little public interest or citizen activity in this field. Over the next ten years, the Committee studied and made recommendations regarding legislation, sponsored sessions and workshops, and produced a directory of treatment resources in the state. By 1968, when the Committee voted to disband, New Jersey had established a Bureau of Narcotics and Drug Abuse under the Division of Community Affairs of the Department of Institutions and Agencies, and clinics had been established through the state. (8)

During this period, the Council also addressed the issue of who should pay for social welfare programs. In response to the rising living costs of the 1960s, the Council's Fees for Service Committee published Guidelines to the Measurement of Ability to Pay for Health and Social Services, which appeared in several editions between 1962 and 1973. In addition to committee work, the Council continued to hold yearly conferences and workshops and to publish its newsletter, the Bulletin, as well as the Legislative Information Bulletin (1954-1975), which monitored social welfare bills in the state legislature. Between 1956 and 1969, the Council held an annual Legislative Forum, where both sides of pending bills were presented.

In spite of the Council's many achievements during the postwar era, it continued to suffer from financial difficulties. In 1946, because of new regulations, it could no longer accept tax exempt contributions. The Council tried to appeal this ruling several times, resolving in 1950 to stop any activity which could be construed as lobbying. Committees were directed to present both sides of issues in reports and testimony, although they were encouraged to try to influence legislation indirectly. (9) In this year, the Council also changed its structure, grouping committees into three subject based divisions—Group Services, Individual Services, and Health—each of which had a director.

In order to further address the problem of its tax status, the Council founded a branch organization, the Social Welfare Research Foundation of New Jersey, in 1964. The purpose of the Foundation was to raise money to perform and disseminate research in the field of social welfare. It was governed by its own board of trustees, but shared headquarters with the Council; the two organizations had a joint steering committee and representation on mutual committees. The Foundation devoted much of its time to the planning of the Annual Institutes, workshops for social workers given at the Council's annual conference on issues such as juvenile justice, drug abuse, mental health, disabilities, and crisis intervention. The Institutes, which were partially underwritten by a grant from the Switz Foundation, attracted from 400 to 500 participants a year. The Foundation also undertook a study of New Jersey's laws relating to young people, which resulted in the publication of a pamphlet for teenagers, The Law—Get With It (1967), and a second edition, The Law—For Real (1970), which were distributed in schools and community organizations. The success of this project led to the publication of the Far Out Green Super Cool series of comic books aimed at grade school children.

Even after the establishment of the Social Welfare Research Foundation, the Council continued to attempt to regain tax exempt status. It feared losing the support of the United Funds (later United Way), its greatest source of income. (10) In fact, in 1967, because of the Council's financial problems, the two organizations negotiated a merger, but terminated the agreement the following year because of administrative and budgetary difficulties. The Council remained active, however, during the early 1970s. In 1972, Vice President Jessamine Merrill represented the Council on the New Jersey Child Care Planning Committee, which brought together parents, professionals and citizens to evaluate and plan for day care in the state. The Committee formed the Coalition for Children of New Jersey in 1973. During this period, the Council also published the Directory of Social Welfare and Health Services in New Jersey (1973), as well as serving as a referral service for people seeking help or information about social welfare.

In 1975, the New Jersey Welfare Council and the Social Welfare Research Foundation merged to form a new tax exempt organization, the Council for Human Services of New Jersey. In spite of the merger, the Council's financial difficulties continued. Membership and contributions declined, as many of the Council's functions were taken over by the state, and it faced competition from better funded and more narrowly focused organizations. The 1976 conference failed to attract anticipated attendance, leaving the Council seriously in debt and forcing it to lay off its Executive Director and Secretary and vacate its office in Trenton. The Council found new space in Trenton in the Contemporary Club, of which Merrill was an officer, and continued its activities largely through volunteer effort. As well as continuing to hold the annual conference and publish its newsletter, the Council joined the Alliance for Affordable Housing, which successfully opposed attempts to prevent the courts from forcing municipalities to build low cost housing. In 1985, the Council was also one of several amici curiae petitioners seeking to require the New Jersey Department of Human Services to establish and enforce adequate standards for public assistance.

In 1989, the Council had to vacate its office at the Contemporary Club and place its records and furniture in storage. In November 1990, Board member Charlotte Kohn Abberman allowed the Council to operate out of her office in Fairfield, New Jersey. Attempts to contact it in 1997 were unsuccessful.

(1) The Council went through several name changes during its ninety year history. Originally known as both the New Jersey Conference of Charities and Corrections and the New Jersey State Conference of Charities and Correction, it was renamed the New Jersey Conference for Social Welfare in 1919, the New Jersey Conference of Social Work in 1925, and the New Jersey Welfare Council in 1938. In 1975, it merged with the Social Welfare Research Foundation of New Jersey and took on its name, but the following year renamed itself the Council for Human Services of New Jersey. The name was modified slightly to Council for Human Services in New Jersey in 1983. (2) Hugh Fox, "History of the New Jersey Conference of Charities and Correction," typescript (1912), box 23, folder 13. (3) "Revised Constitution of the New Jersey Conference for Social Welfare," The New Jersey Conference of Social Work Twenty-fifth Annual Meeting [Proceedings] (Asbury Park, N.J., 1926). The organization later moved its office to Montclair in late 1965 and then to Trenton in early 1969. (4) Douglas H. Macneil, Seven Years of Unemployment Relief in New Jersey, 1930-1936 (Washington, 1938), iv. (5) "A Brief History of the New Jersey Welfare Council, 1881-1962," typescript (1974), box 23, folder 14. (6) Minutes of the Adoptions Committee (February 19, 1953), box 15, folder 28. (7) See discussion in James Leiby, Charity and Correction in New Jersey (New Brunswick, N.J., 1967), 348-352. (8) Final Report of the Drug Addiction Study Committee (November 7, 1968), box 16, folder 36. (9) Minutes of the Public Welfare Committee, box 19, folder 11. (10) Report from the Committee to Obtain Tax Status (December 13, 1966), box 8, folder 41.