416 ILLINOIS STATE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE* 



out-patients, one must first know home conditions and 

 adjust them to the needs of the patient, be that patient 

 mother, father or child. In adjusting home conditions 

 we come in contact with the schools, with day nurseries, 

 homes for the friendless, with the employer, with the 

 employment bureaus, with the Relief and Aid Societies, 

 with practical housekeepers, in fact all agencies which 

 have to do with social re-adjustment. The social worker 

 makes these contacts; but suppose there is no contact 

 to make, and suppose each social worker tries to work 

 the problem out alone. There is no need for me to re- 

 peat that "In union there is strength". The first call 

 then for our Association is the co-ordination of all the 

 agencies concerned, and especially the union of all the 

 cardiac clinics, including the social workers. It is in the 

 cardiac clinics that the needs for other agencies first be- 

 came manifest and it is by a union of the cardiac clinics 

 and the existing organizations that these needs can be 

 brought before the public and eventually fulfilled. 



Our Chicago Association is, as I have said, young. 

 Our first step after procuring an executive secretary was 

 to find out what agencies we already had in Chicago that 

 could help us in our fight against heart disease. We 

 knew that very few agencies wore known; we are now 

 convinced that very few agencies exist in Chicago. Why 

 were only eleven out of the 341 discharges sent to con- 

 valescent homes? Chiefly because there are in the whole 

 State of Illinois only 242 year round convalescent beds 

 for all conditions. Does that bring home the need? Why 

 did only five cases out of the 344 report at the existing 

 cardiac clinics? The chief reason (there are many oth- 

 ers) is that there are too few social workers to follow 

 them up and see that they return; there would be more 

 workers available for those who could be helped if we 

 had some place to send and care for those who cannot 

 be helped, in other words a hospital for chronics, or bet- 

 ter a hospital for Heart Disease. 



When we started oiir association, every one of us rea- 

 lized that a perplexing problem was the employment of 

 the cardiac and we hoped to co-operate with the Bureau 

 for the Handicapped. But there is no longer any Bureau 



