Administrative History
Conditions Governing Use
Preferred Citation
Conditions Governing Access
Organization
Scope and Content
Title: Family Service of Los Angeles records
Collection number: 0400
Contributing Institution:
USC Libraries Special Collections
Language of Material:
English
Physical Description:
19.18 Linear feet
46 boxes
Date (inclusive): 1925-1998
Abstract: The Family Service of Los Angeles records document the activities of this social service organziation from its beginnings
during the early years of the Depression, to its end in a merger with the Didi Hirsch Community Mental Health Center. 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. 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, and newsletters.
creator:
Family Service of Los Angeles.
creator:
Family Welfare Association of Los Angeles.
Administrative History
Los Angeles in the early 1920s doubled its population. As the city became metropolitan and its suburban communities began
to spread out in continuous conurbation across the basin, city and county governments remained small and the provision of
adequate social services for the new population inevitably lagged. Family Service of Los Angeles (known until 1946 as Family
Welfare Association of Los Angeles) 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 1926, an initial request for funding of the report's proposal was declined.
By 1929, with the boom well past in Los Angeles and unemployment already a serious problem, demands for increased social services
were being heard from subscribers to the Community Chest. 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 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, 1930, 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. 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 the Family Welfare Association 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 1931 the Association had a caseload of 1,187 families, which grew to 18,071
families in the following year. By 1936 the agency had increased its staff to ten caseworkers and had taken over all family
relief services in downtown Los Angeles. In its second year the Association 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. When all its allocations and reserves were used up by early summer 1933, the Association 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 1934, the Association
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, the Association 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 the Association would lose many of its caseworkers to the better paying
federal service, a problem that would persist for the next few decades.
At first only casework supervisors at the Assocation had professional qualifications. Of the six women in the agency's Metro
office--and they were all women until 1939--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. Although the Assocation's
purpose was 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, their efforts during the first years of the agency's existence focused on the prompt giving
of relief rather than casework. In 1935 the worst appeared to be over, and the agency began to concentrate its efforts on
casework, leaving relief work to federal and couny agencies. By 1936 the agency had refocused its efforts on middle income
families, leaving relief for the poor to county agencies.
The 1950s 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. By the mid 1950s months-long waiting lists for assistance had accumulated
at Family Service offices--a condition that would persist until the advent of competition in the 1970s, 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 persisted in paying lower than norm salaries. 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.
From the 1960s into the 1980s Family Service 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.
Family Service's response to these events, and to the War on Poverty, were minimal.
In 1970, when federal funding had begun to decline 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 1974 with its first deficit.
In the spring of 1981 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 Board hired a new CEO who began to devote new efforts to public relations, fund raising, and marketing. He
made many suggestions for new programs and was 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. 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 Angeles
was associated. But when a staff member embezzled funds from one such contract in 1988, this source of income was lost for
over a year, pending an inquiry and repayment of the funds.
In 1987, Family Service began to experience financial hardships as a result of poor real estate transactions--a lease on expensieve
mid-city headquarters, overmortgaged properties, an unprofitable orange grove, and an unsalable building. By 1991 the agency
was operating on a $3 million budget, with ten satellite locations throughout Los Angeles. But it was bleeding resources,
and 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 and normal community fund raising efforts
could not fill the gap. 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 1995, when Family Service
merged with the Didi Hirsch Community Mental Health Center.
Conditions Governing Use
The use of archival materials for on-site research does not constitute permission from the California Social Welfare Archives
to publish them. Copyright has not been assigned to the California Social Welfare Archives, and the researcher is instructed
to obtain permission to quote from or publish manuscripts in the CSWA's collections from the copyright holder.
Preferred Citation
[Box/folder# or item name], Family Service of Los Angeles records, Collection no. 0400, California Social Welfare Archives,
Special Collections, USC Libraries, University of Southern California
Conditions Governing Access
Advance notice required for access.
Organization
The records are organized into 14 series: 1. Board of Directors; 2. Committees; 3. Administration; 4. Accreditation and Evaluation;
5. Advisory Councils; 6. Heckman Survey; 7. Family Service Association of America; 8. Agency seminars; 9. Reports and proposals;
10. Programs and proposals; 11. Studies and reviews; 12. Agency history; 13. Conference papers; 14. Other agencies.
Scope and Content
The Family Service of Los Angeles records consist primarily of meeting minutes, 1925-1988, that document in great detail the
day to day activies of this private social service organization. In addition to minutes, the records also contain some correspondence
and memorandums, notes, reports, clippings, and brochures. The minutes provide a comprehensive look at the history and functioning
of Family Service from its beginnings as the Family Welfare Assocaition of Los Angeles through its merger with the Did Hirsch
Community Health Center. Of particular historical value are Depression era relief reports from 1930 to 1936, produced as the
new agency repeatedly expanded its services in its first years to keep pace with the nation's economic emergency, and the
records of the last ten years of Family Service's decline.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Family Service Association of America. -- Archives
Family Service of Los Angeles. -- Archives
Family Welfare Association of Los Angeles. -- Archives
Correspondence
Los Angeles (Calif.)--Social conditions--20th century--Archival resources
Memorandums
Minutes
Newsletters
Nonprofit organizations--California--Los Angeles County--History--Archival resources
Reports
Social group work--California--Los Angeles County--Archival resources