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Workers Aiding Families. In other sections of this report are discussed in detail the needs for several different types of work with Indian families to improve their living conditions and their health and to aid them in making the adjustments required by the pressure of highly organized white civilization.^[1] These types of service are public health instructive nursing; actual care of the sick; the constructive administration of poor relief; instruction in home making and management, including particularly diet and cooking, home sanitation, the intelligent use of the family income, and methods of supplementing that income through activities which will strengthen rather than weaken family life; aid in overcoming those conditions which are at present resulting in broken homes, irregular relations between the sexes, irregular or no school attendance, and delinquency; encouragement in the development of recreation and community activities using both the Indians’ own native games, sports, and gatherings, and those of the whites which the Indians enjoy, as an indirect attack upon the use of alcohol and peyote and other drugs and as a means of gradually eliminating such features of Indian dances, games, and celebrations as are actually detrimental to health and economic well being.

In the discussion of the proposed Division of Planning and Development it has been recommended that the central office secure for the laying out of programs and for aiding and advising superintendents and other field workers, technically trained specialists in each of these broad branches, either as permanent or temporary employees, and that it secure the cooperation of national organizations devoted to them. To have in each local jurisdiction a separate trained professional worker for each function is of course utterly out of the question. Many of the jurisdictions are altogether too small to warrant it. Several are so small that reliance must be placed on one or two persons to perform all these varied functions with such aid and assistance as can be secured from the superintendent and other local employees, and from the specialists in the central office and the contacts made through them. Several of the jurisdictions are large enough to warrant three or more workers. Some, notably the Osages, are wealthy enough to have several if the Indians can be convinced that such workers will render them a service of inestimable value.