This thesis describes the evolution of a research design intended to explore an ethnically heterogeneous, mobile, lower socioeconomic population of an area in downtown Montreal. The work culminated in the development, pretest and analysis of an interview schedule. The following variables are incorporated in this schedule: the independent variables are household predicaments inferred from issues in food, clothing, health and occupation; the dependent variable is the householder's ability to cape with predicaments arising from the need to satisfy these requirements in the maintenance of a household. Degrees of predicaments are to be assessed by their effect on role performance (role handicap); effectiveness of coping is similarly identified by the degree of role handicap remaining. The results of the pretest of this schedule on seventeen respondents is discussed, mainly in terms of errors of omission and commission in the construction of the schedule.

This thesis is concerned with a study of the experiences ten delinquent boys had, in their pre-adolescence, as participants in recreation and informal education agencies. It seeks to explore, by analyzing these experiences, whether the recreation agency can play a role in the prevention and prediction of juvenile delinquency. A sample group of ten delinquents, who had experiences in recreation agencies, were selected from among the residents of the Boys’ Farm and Training School in Shawbridge, Quebec. Records kept at the Boys’ Farm and Training School and interviews with the boys, were the sources of data. In the interviews, questions were designed to get factual information about agency participation, behaviour patterns demonstrated during participation, relationships with staff and other members, attitudes towards the agency and the manner and extent of parent contact with agency. The data was analyzed in light of what has been said in current literature about the causes and prevention of delinquency. The final chapter concludes that the recreation and informal education agency does have the potential for contributing to the prevention and prediction of juvenile delinquency, It offers suggestions for adaptations and additions in their service if they are to realize this potential. Furthermore, areas for future research are indicated.

The project investigates aspects of professional social work which derive from its association with bureaucratic organizations. This enquiry is based upon sociological evidence that the combination of professional and bureaucratic modes of occupational life contains mutually dysfunctional aspects. The published work by Blau and Scott, Formal Organizations, is the point of departure for the study. The data are the perceptions of social workers as obtained by a slightly modified 85 item questionnaire developed by W.R. Scott in his work on a Doctoral dissertation in Sociology at the University of Chicago. The questionnaire was distributed to 12 social work settings in Montreal. Coded data from the 128 respondents were used in IBM processing. Findings suggest that training and experience are associated with some opposition to supervision, but divergent findings and interpretations are reported on the theoretically non-professional aspect of supervision in social work as a nascent profession. Perceptions of the extent to which seven principles and standards are fulfilled in practice seem affected by respondents’ religious beliefs and by the extent to which a given principle corresponds to cultural values. Social work at present meets, in varying degrees, some of the criteria of a profession. For professional workers, informal norms of the social work community suggest occupational reinforcements via advancement to supervisory posts and by identification with medicine, especially psychiatry. The high proportion of women in social work practice and other topics are suggested for future investigation.

This study is an analysis of thirty-one interviews held in 1952, with men who were residing at the Meurling Refuge, a municipal shelter in the city of Montreal. It is undertaken with a view to learn of the factors that might have some bearing on why these particular men have become dependent on an institution of this nature. In addition, the writer will survey other existing services available in Canada for the homeless and consider how these services meet the needs of these men. As described in this study, a "homeless man" will denote one who is not attached to a family group in the community in which he is residing, even though members of his family might be living in the same area. Seldom is he willing or able to sustain regular employment, with the result that he has either a marginal income or a complete lack of funds.

This study focused on the conflict of views about adolescence that confronts group work practitioners. The study explored attitudes held by selected adolescent and adult groups in an attempt to contribute to a clarification of the extent to which adolescents rebel against adults and belong to a strong subculture of their own. Furthermore, it was hoped that such data might point a direction for effective social group work with adolescents. Following an attitudinal measurement model of Abraham J. Tannenbaum, ‘Adolescent Attitudes Toward Academic Brillance’ (New York: Columbia University, 1962), data were gathered on attitudes towards adolescent characteristics representing reliance on adults, peers, and convention. These characteristics were described by verbal stereotypes to which respondents were asked to give social acceptance ratings.

This study is an inquiry into the problems of selection of two communities of Metropolitan Montreal as a preliminary step to a community organization project the objective of which is to increase the satisfaction of existing community needs from the available, but not fully utilized, community resources. In the first three chapters of this thesis, the rationale for the study is presented and the scientific base of the study is analyzed. In the following two chapters, the methodology of the study is developed and the study process in which the two communities are selected is described. A comparative study of the two communities and the presentation of results of the study follow, leading in the conclusion to the selection of the Action - Community and to an assessment of validity of the working hypothesis.

This study describes a new plan of using non-professional staff in a Social Service Department of a metropolitan General Hospital. It aims to determine the types of assignments that can appropriately be undertaken by non-professional personnel without prejudice to the professional statue of the Social Service Department. It examines the assignments undertaken by non -professional personnel in two test periods covering a span of five months. The study includes a description of the research setting, and of the problems that press for the use of non-professional personnel. The work loads and responsibilities of the professional and non-professional staff members who participated in the study are systematically examined, also the general characteristics of assignments undertaken by non-professional personnel. It was found that professional social workers differed dramatically in their acceptance of, or resistance to, the use of non-professional personnel. It was also found that despite these mixed reactions, non-professional personnel could carry a substantial proportion of the work normally carried by professional social workers, and that in most areas of service the professional status of the Social Service Department was safeguarded by the supervision of professional staff.

This thesis is concerned with the analysis of soma factors pertinent to the social adjustment in Montreal of fifty Hungarian refugees. The thesis is a by-product of a larger study conducted by three psychiatrists and the present writer in 1961.The study seeks to determine some of the factors that help or hinder the immigrant or refugee in his social adjustment to the host-country. The scope is limited to the exploration of a few major questions, e.g., language ability, employment and economic situation, and social and cultural adjustment. The project is limited by the small number of subjects and by the selection of questions from the original larger schedule. It was found that young people have less difficulty in adjusting to the new environment than older immigrants, and that a substantial number of married women do not work outside the home in spite of low family income.

Boys’ Clubs are presently undergoing a painful period of re-orientation. They are beginning to look beyond their boy-centered recreational programs into the community and the manifold problems and challenges it presents. They are, in the language of the Boys' Clubs, becoming extremely "guidance conscious." The purpose of this study is to examine the guidance component of a guidance conscious Boys' Club.

The purpose of this study is to decipher the means by which the identities of particular people, specifically unaccompanied and separated child asylum-seekers, are socially constructed as risk. Theorized here as "risk identity", this has occurred within a global context increasingly preoccupied with security. Racialized and imbued with ideological notions of citizenship, this preoccupation and the anxieties contained within it, are effectively yet unduly transferred onto individuals, who for a variety of reasons not innately related to security, are seen as undesirable. The "risk identity" classification becomes the means by Which their exclusion is legitimized and perpetuated. The increased movement of unaccompanied and separated children across international borders has occurred within this global context. Positioned largely in opposition to citizens of the industrialized west, unaccompanied and separated children seeking asylum in Canada are constructed as risk in myriad ways. Based on 13 interviews, 9 with stakeholders and 4 with youth, this study highlights four interconnected categories of risk, which serve to construct unaccompanied and separated minors as risk. These are anti-refugee discourse, anti-youth discourse, as it relates to juvenile justice discourse, prejudicial attitudes and the fear of difference, and securitization discourse.