HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Goderich Signal-Star, 1986-10-22, Page 17Mary Chaffee, 96,(above) worked for the
Huron County Children's Aid for over 20
years. A social worker. singe 1919 in Toron-
to, 'she came to Goderich in 1940 and
retired as supervisor in 1961. She lived and
loved her work and even moved the office
of the Children's Aid into her home on
Lighthouse Street in the 50s when the coun-
ty courthouse burned down. She still lives
in Goderich for half of the year, but moves
to Florida during the winter months. At
right is a copy of the cover of the 1919
Children's Aid and Humane Society of
Huron County eighth annual report. The
motto of that group was: "It is. wiser and
less expensive to save the children than to
punish criminals." ( photo of Mary Chaffee
by Susan Hundertmark)
The Huron County Board of Education
and its staff need all of your help in order
to achieve one of the goals established for
the 1986-87 school year. That goal is 'to
develop a communications program to
enhance the knowledge and understanding
of the Huron County school system'.
We have to hear from as many of you as
possible so that we can assess the needs of
our community and implement solutions.
I feel that our three schools in Goderich
have made a concerted effort to improve
Yl,n nnvvsv�-rvonir•;�4irtti.<4 network. School
newsletters, classroom newsletters, school
handbooks, codes of behaviour, open
houses and parents' meetings are a few of
the very effective tools already being used.
Some of you will be completely satisfied
with these • present efforts. There may be
some of you who may wish to give sugges-
tions as to how these existing efforts might
be improved upon. And lastly, there may
be some who have ideas for new
initiatives.
I have read a few books on communica-
tions and marketing the school sytem
recently. One of these books published 100
ideas on more effective marketing. I'm
happy to report that many of these sugges-
tions are currently in use in Huron County.
The following are just a few of the ideas:
Call more public meetings;
Publish school board newsletters;
Increase encouragement to and emphasis
on Home and School Associations (PTA);
Form a Community Relations Committee
composed of trustees, teachers, ad-
ministrators and parents;
Assess your community's perception of the
school system through a questionnaire or
telephone survey;
Ask teachers to make one phone call a
week to a parent to say something positive
about his or her child;
Hold a conference for parents and other
community members interested in learn-
ing more about education;
Offer workshops on topics such as
discipline, street -proofing, testing etc.;
The Women's Teacher Federation sug-
gests that every school prepare handbooks
for parent information.
In the near future the parents of
Goderich school children will be asked to
fill out a questionnaire sent to them by the
schools. If your child didn't bring one
home, just request one from your school.
It will ask for your comments on the
strengths and weaknesses of the com-
munications system in your child's school:
It will also ask for any general suggestions
you may wish to make.
Please take a few minutes to complete
these .... your children will be the winners.
Some of you may find this next section
rather tedious but I felt that it was impor-
tant to let you know what some of the
ministry of education's directives are in
the communications field. The ministry
has commissioned many reports recently
and I have found a recurring theme in all
of them .... "Improve communications and
allow parents and public more input into
the school system".
The Early Primary Education Report
has seven of its 32 recommendations deal-
ing with improving communication. It also
states the importance of parental par-
ticipation and recommends that "every
school board establish an advisory com-
mittee or some other mechanism to make
recommendations to the board on matters,
affecting the development and delivery of
progam and services for primary age
children".
The McDonald Commission recom-
mends "that schools aim for closer iden-
tification with their neighbourhoods to im-
prove the schools and ,to raise public
awareness of and support for the education
system".
The Shapiro Report carried out surveys,
accepted written reports and took advan-
tage of surveys already taken. I am in
disagreement with many of the report's
suggestions, but I found some of their fin-
dings quite interesting.
A recurring these throughout the Com-
mis'sion's activities was that the
bureaucracy and adminstration of public
school tended to be cool and distant except
to the most aggressive of parents, whereas
a close relationship between parents and
staff was constantly cited as a reason for
the attractiveness of a private school.
I am' very concerned with this finding
and hope that the Goderich public doesn't
feel this same way.
One of Shapiro's findings that I wasn't
surprised at was this: "One impression
made strongly by Ontario parents is that
parents wish to have a more direct in-
fluence and more direct input into the
education of their children."
This next comment I took very much to
heart: "The commission does believe that
school board trustees have a responsibility
for both a sensitivity to the needs of local
communities and the development of pro -
gain -Ames that reflect these needs."
Hopefully the information gathered
from the questionnaires being sent to
teachers and parents and the responses I
may get from this article will lielpme in
satisfying that responsibility.
The Shapiro Commission recommends
that "each school be required to establish
a school committee including the prin-
cipal, teachers and elected parents".
The task of this committee would be to
communicate, through the principal, with
the school board so that the board is in-
formed as to the cpmmunity's priority con-
cerns with regard to the school's policies
and programmes and the community is
similarly informed with regard to the
board. ' •
How many dfyolt would like to see such a
group being formed?
Towards The Year 2000 suggests the
to r.aWe 3 0
*Entertainment • Features
*Religion *Family • More
GODERICH SIGNAL -STAR. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1986—PAGE 1A
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elping farnilies or*75
Social workers reminisce as Children's
BY SUSAN HUNDERTMARK
When it comes down to the basics – the
ready response to families in economic
and emotional crises, the protection of
abused and mistreated children and the
support of single parents – very little has
changed in the 75 years that Family and
Children's Services (or the Children's Aid)
has been established in Huron County.
..t. ttoc! - "f !'""P /v 'e ehanriPd
with the changing of social attitudes,
several things remain constant including
the genuine concern and dedication of
social workers towards the people of the
county and the community's support of the
agency with foster parents, financial dona-
tions and the cooperation of police and
other professionals.
When Mary Chaffee came to Goderich in
1940 as the assistant to the Children's Aid's
superintendent Mr. Edwards, she was the
first married woman in Canada to work
with unmarried parents.
"I had worked in Toronto since 1919 in
social work and had specialized in unmar-
ried parent work. I came to Huron County
because in those days, they had just 'taken
some Rolitical man out of the community
to look after children and they were very
anxious to have • trained' workers." she
says.
Chaffee, 96, who lives both in Goderich
and Florida for half of each year, worked
for the Children's Aid in Huron for over 20
years retiring at age 70 as the agency's
supervisor.
She remembers the agency.to be staffed
by dedicated workers who did excellent
work for the community Whether they
were trained or untrained.
"I had a real joy out of waking up each
day and going to work. It really never was
work. It was just carrying on with your
life. My religion was my work and I ex-
pressed it in my work," she says.
The fact that she lived and loved her
work is well demonstrated later in her
career when she moved the Children's Aid
office to her home on Lighthouse Street in
the 1950s between the time when the coun-
ty courthouse burned down and was
rebuilt.
She says she had a special relationship
with her supervisor Mr. Edwards whom
she called "Pop." Though he had no for-
mal training as a social worker and she
did, she admired his work.
"He had common sense and did his work
marvellously without any experience at
all. He snorted at the training but he was
quite happy with me and that was the
secret of our society. Unfortunately
though, trained and untrained workers
were divided in so many other societies,"
she says.
Social work in the 40s and 50s centred
around adoption and family problems such
as unemployment, family quarrels and
separtion.
"We'd have to deal with husbands seeing
other women, parents quarreling or
mothers leaving- and needing their
children looked after," she says.
One incident she remembers vividly is
being called in the middle of the night by
the police and accompanying them
through the snow to a family where the
, parents were quarreling, the wife had
taken out the butcher knife against her
husband and the children were all crying.
"It was a free-for-all. We took the
children out of the home and into the
shelter for the night and then into foster
homes. But, the children eventually went
back home and we never had any more
trouble with the family. It was a family we
could work with," she says.
Often families resented social workers
"butting into their business" but Chaffee
says some families "just had to have so-
meone help them when they went off the
beaten track."
"We always tried to help them very
much before we took the children," she
adds.
Because Chaffee's specialty was unmar-
ried parents, she found her greatest
satisfaction placing children who were up
for adoption in the most appropriate home.
"We had letters recently from women
who were placed in air force homes during
the Second World War. One wanted us to
know she'd had a wonderful upbringing
and wanted to know about her own mother
and her medical background," says Ida
White, who was a social worker under
Chaffee.
"She found her mother in London and
was able to comfort her and let her know
she shouldn't feel guilty and that she is lov-
ed," she says.
"Until recently, that kind of information
was all very hush, hush," adds Chaffee.
Chaffee says she remembers Huron
County having a wonderful adoption
service.
"1 don't think there'd be half a dozen
that didn't turn out well. I wanted to have
the right family for the right child and I
think we did' very well at that. It pleases
me most when the children still recognize
me and tell me how they turned out," she
says.
And, although many children were
adopted, Chaffee says the agency helped
unmarried parents keep their babies if
they wanted to.
"She was so humane, feeling for every
girl and every baby," says White.
Chaffee agrees saying she did concern
herself personally even though that wasn't
the recommended way to do things in
social work.
"Social work is a special work that needs
special people. They have to have their
feet on the ground and be'able to see both
sides of a situation. The hardest thing is to
Y
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S
Aid celebrates anniversary
TRUSTEE
TALK
Mary Ann Dempsey
Public input
vital for school
children's futur
not get emotional about it; you have to
keep a sense of balance," she says.
`,`I always feel privileged to have had the
satisfaction of seeing social work develop.,
Social work releases the human side of
us," she says adding that Huron County
has always had great service from the
local Children's Aid.
Clare McGowan, who started as a social
worker in Huron in 1946, was the first
graduate social worker on staff. She grew
up near Blyth and because she'd done field
work with Chaffee during her schooling in
Toronto, Chaffee asked her to come to
Huron County to work and she ended up
spending the next 25 years with the Huron
County Children's Aid, the last nine as the
supervisor or director.
She never married because she devoted
her life to her job, which she loved. But
still, she jokes, "There wasn't an old maid'
in the county with more children than
me."
When McGowan started, her salary was
$1,400 a year and there were two social
workers on staff and one secretary to
cover children scattered throughout the
county.
Though she was terrified at first of doing
unmarried parent work and going to court,
she ended up doing both eventually.
She remembers both funny and heart-
breaking experiences during her time as a
social worker. One funny experience
revolved around a police report that a little
girl was being neglected.
"A girl had complained to her teacher
that her parents 'would go a way and leave
her all the heavy work on the farm and not
feed her proper meals."
"When I investigated, the father was ex-
ceedingly angry but I discovered that she
actually liked doing chores around the
farm and was telling stories to get atten-
tion at•school. And, as far as I could figure
out, the family was getting along very
well. She was a little monkey," she says.
One of the more tragic stories involved a
woman whose husband deserted her but
paid $5 a year to support their four young
children so the agency could do nothing
under the,law to have hime penalized.
When the woman could no longer finan-
cially support her children she was forced
to give there up for adoption. She kept in
touch with McGowan and every-Chiristmas
McGowan would deliver a Christ ias pre-
sent to the woman's children explaining.
that their real mother had sent them. (The
woman was not allowed to visit the
children for fear she would confuse them.)
A few years later, the mother got a good
job and would have been able to support
her children but because_ adoption was ir-
reversible, she had to resign herself to the
fact that she could never see her children
again.
Years later, the father wrote the
Children's Aid to tell them that he had
developed diabetes so they could share the
knowledge with his children.
"It was so sad, my heart broke for the
woman. If the husband had only done his
share, the children wouldn't have had to be
adopted. The hardest thing in the world is
to take a child from his home. Those things
were only done indesperation," she says.
Service clubs and professionals in the
community were always very generous
with the Children's Aid and during
McGowan's years as a social worker, the
Lion's Club sponsored medical clinics in
Clinton with specialists from London for
crippled children.
McGowan was responsible for bringing
children to the clinic and one year, a
10 -year-old child whom teachers had com-
plained about was discovered to be deaf
and mute and placed in a school for the
deaf. "I don't know how they missed it,"
she says.
Another child about whom people had
complained was crazy turned out to have
physieth disabilities and received help at
the clinic for the first time.
The .air force and the radar achoo1 in
Clinton also helped the Children's Aid start
up the Christmas_ Bureau by asking stores
in London for shopworn toys they could fix
up and give to children.
"Some of these youngsters had never
had a new toy in their lives," she says.
The Christmas Bureau also distributed
food, clothing, gifts and mitts and scarves
as it continues to do today.
"We were criticized one Christmas
because we helped the bootlegger's family
but the children wouldn't have had a
Christmas otherwise," she says.
The Lions Club was also very generous
helping to pay for new clothes for children
in care of the Children's Aid and the
Women's Institute helped pay for music
lessons and provided a bursary for girls to
go to school to become a hairdressers of a
nurse's assistant.
Still, it was hard to convince some
families that the Children's Aid only
wanted to help them. McGowan says she
got sworn at and had the door slammed in
her face often enough but adds that during
the nastiest investigations, she always met
some of the loveliest people.
"My feeling is that you don't judge so-
meone because you don't know what you'd
have done in the same situation."
"Children who grow up without love in
their homes, don't know how to love.
Children who are beaten a lot think that's
the way to treat children. But, there's
always some good in every person no mat-
ter who they are or what they do," she
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