Family Desertion (Report on a Study of 423 Cases

SOME eighteen years ago, a group of Jewish social workers and laymen met in St. Louis, at their annual conference, and took steps to establish an agency to deal with the problem of family desertion. For some years before, the problem had been a vexing one to relief agencies whose representatives had discussed the question at its first conference held in 1901, when it was found that some relief organizations spent as much as 20 per cent of their total budget in the maintenance of deserted families, and that in addition, communities and municipalities had been spending considerably more in the maintenance of deserted children in orphanages and foster homes. Indeed, the discussion of this problem and how to meet it was in part responsible for bringing the National Conference of Jewish Social Service into being. As a result of these deliberations, and particularly after the discussion of papers read by Dr. Lee K. Frankel and Morris D. Waldman, who outlined a plan of organization, the National Desertion Bureau was established in 1911. Its board, presided over by Walter H. Liebman of New York, consists of lawyers and social workers. The Bureau set for itself the purpose of acting as a clearing house for all Jewish social service organizations, which desire its assistance in coping with the evil. This assistance includes an attempt to locate missing husbands and fathers of indigent families; to co6perate with referring agencies and other community resources, both social and legal, in effecting reconciliations where feasible and advisable, or bringing about arrangements for separate support and maintenance or the prosecution through existing legal means of recalcitrant offenders; to cooirdinate the activities of social agencies, legal aid organizations and individuals in different states which are assisting the Bureau in its search for the deserters and which act as its volunteer investigators and correspondents; to arrange for the defense, to institute, defend or contest matrimonial actions when such action is for the best interest of the family and the community. The Bureau also acts in an advisory capacity to its constituent organizations and clients in legal questions of domestic relations

Agency (philosophy · Desertion · Judaism · Political science · Public relations · Social science · Sociology · History · Homelessness and Social Issues · Law · Public Administration · Social Work

• When Harry left Sally

  Open Access•Tomas Cvrcek•Demographic Research•2009

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