History of Human Services Essay

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History Of Human Services

When the Kalamazoo Foundation began in 1925, the welfare state in the U.S. was minimal, and on the federal level almost nonexistent. Problems of poverty, hunger, racism, unemployment, and inadequate education were largely left to the start and local levels to be dealt with by private charities and religious organizations. This only changed with the expansion of the federal safety net during the New Deal of the 1930s and the Great Society of the 1960s, although it has been contracting again over the last thirty years. During the Progressive Era of 1900-20 and into the next decade, civic-minded philanthropists and capitalists often took the lead in dealing with the social and economic problems of urban, industrial America, among them Dr. W.E. Upjohn, founder of Upjohn Pharmaceuticals. In addition to donating the first $1,000 in stock to establish the Kalamazoo Foundation, Upjohn also founded Bronson Methodist Hospital, the Civic Auditorium and the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. His heirs have continued this tradition of charitable giving and community involvement, as have other elite families in Kalamazoo. Indeed, the pre-welfare state era of 1900-30 was they heyday of this type of civic republicanism in Kalamazoo and many other industrial cities, with the creation of the Rotary Club (1914), Kiwanis Club (1917), the League of Women Voters (1920) and a variety of other civic organizations and charities (Miller-Adams, 2009, p. 51). Kalamazoo has therefore always ranked very high in surveys of social capital, volunteerism, private donations and civic participation.

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By 1965, the Foundation had a capital of $25.4 million, making it the sixth largest in the country. That year it distributed $673,219 to various community groups across a broad spectrum of charitable causes, including the arts, schools, churches, hospitals and nursing homes (Rakstis, 1967, p. 36).

In comparison, during the present era that began with deindustrialization and economic decline in the Rust Belt Midwest in the 1970s and 1980s still has a larger level of state and federal involvement in social welfare than the pre-1933 era. Nevertheless, the amount of resources has been declining, leading to a renewed emphasis on private charities, local community groups and religious organizations, especially in recessions like the present. Kalamazoo and many other cities like it are no longer the major manufacturing centers that they once were, and by 2005 its poverty rate was 30.2%, more the double the national average (Miller-Adams, p. 57). As usual, minorities and youth were particularly hard hit by social and economic decline in these older industrial centers. In 2001, the Kalamazoo Foundation established the Better Tomorrow/Kalamazoo Initiative, which provided grants of up to $1,000 to individuals in order "to encourage neighbors to become actively engaged in the health and well-being of the community" (Wang, 2007, p. 91).

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