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Montreal Council of Social Agencies Fonds
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Montreal Council of Social Agencies Fonds

  • CA MUA MG 2076
  • Fonds
  • 1919-1976

The administrative records of the MCSA contain annual reports, 1921-1968; minutes of annual meetings, 1956-1971; minutes and correspondence of the Board of Governors and its Executive Committee, 1953-1972; files on budgets and staffing, 1962-1973; and documents on the merger with the Conseil de Développement Social. The operations of standing committees (Committee on Committees, Admissions and Standards, Nominating, etc) are documented by broken series of minutes from 1937 to 1971. Far more extensive are the papers of special committees researching social problems such as school leaving, 1934; single parents, 1949; housing and urban renewal, 1967-1971; dental services for children, 1950-1961; and low-cost medication, 1970-1971. These files include case work studies, correspondence, minutes and reports. The question of day care is particularly well covered, both through committee materials and through the files of Barbara Heppner, MCSA Day Care Coordinator, 1969-70. Correspondence files contain letters and reports from member agencies, university schools of social work, co-ordinating bodies such as the Canadian Welfare Council and the Conseil de Bien-Etre du Québec, various citizen's groups, and government bodies. A large percentage of this material consists of information files, containing reports of, and studies by, American and Canadian social agencies, conference and workshop proceedings, and materials on social legislation.

Montreal Council of Social Agencies

Reports, Studies, Briefs and Surveys

Second only to Projects and Task Forces in number of files, the Reports, Studies, Briefs and Surveys Series has the oldest document in M.G. 2076, the J.H.T. Falk inspired Social and Financial Survey of Protestant and Non-Sectarian Social Agencies of 1919 (file 11). Though after the mid-1960s Projects and Task Forces tended to appropriate records which previously would have gone to Reports, Studies, Briefs And Surveys, the latter series nonetheless remains a prime indicator of social welfare problems, policies and resources for most of the Council's history. With input from internal (especially committee and section) sources and external contributors alike, it features studies and reports by and, about particular MCSA agencies as well as the institution collectively, besides those addressing numerous other welfare issues. Content ranges from mundane questions of infrastructure - administrative organization and function, or Red Feather fundraising and personnel practices, for instance -- to Executive Director J.W. Frei's scholarly, theoretical paper on Research in Socio-Cultural Development (file 289).

Briefs to the federal and provincial governments are an important element of this series. Among the noteworthy are those to the 1968 Royal Commission on the Status of Women (file 861) and the 1964 Special Senate Committee on Aging (file 954), as well as that on Social Policy for Quebec (the 1967 Castonguay Commission, file 5). The two latter submissions indeed come complete with drafts and working papers (files 428, 560 and 936 respectively). Draft documents similarly figure with finished ones in the welfare planning study of Greater Montreal's English-speaking Protestant community conducted by the National Study Service of New York for the MCSA, and in J.W. Frei's response (files 986-988 and 166). While much of the material in this series relates to meeting physical and psychological needs in conventional social agency terms readily intelligible across Canada, a few items also deal with concerns like Quebec's constitutional position, and bilingualism and biculturalism, which have a special relevance for Montreal.

Member Organizations

Spanning the years 1920-1972, virtually the whole of the Council's existence, this series reflects the rather casual filing system which characterized much of its administration. It is not a listing of full-fledged member agencies exclusively, i.e., only those accredited to regularly send delegates to MCSA assemblies and other meetings. (Authoritative lists of such institutional members, however, dated 1949, 1966 and 1971 may be found, amongst other locations, in files 1136, 879 and 30 respectively). Rather, Member Organizations· presents records as they pragmatically accumulated in that series in the course of business and inclusion generally means that application for membership was made, though in a few instances not speedily or even ever endorsed by the Admissions Committee or accepted by the required two-thirds vote of the Board of Governors.

But again, the MCSA did not practice a rigid consistency in these matters. For instance, because of suspected irregularities in services and finances, Christian Homes for Children (file 643) never gained Council membership despite its wish to do so, and it indeed appears in Administrative Records rather than Member Organizations. So, too, does the Cecil Butters Memorial Horne (file 644), though it was a member in spirit and the MCSA and Welfare Federation worked on amiable and cooperative terms with the institution; there was, however, perhaps geographical logic in not formalizing its membership in view of the horne's far removed location at Austin, in the Eastern Townships. On the other hand, while the Association of Leisure Time Services was also omitted from printed membership lists, it occupied the same Red Feather Services Building (1040 Atwater Avenue) as the MCSA and operated under Red Feather-MCSA auspices. It is included in the Member Organization Series.

Member Organizations has one of the widest scope and content ranges of any series, with files holding anything from a single document, usually a membership application (for instance, the Eastern Association of Baptist Churches, file 32), to the more than fifty years' association revealed by the Montreal Diet Dispensary (file 85). Yet, while the Travellers' Aid Society covers something less than half the chronology of the Diet Dispensary, its six files provide one of the fullest looks at the actual-day-to-day operations of any member in the series. In general, a high proportion of Member Organizations not only feature such related basics as their constitutions, letters patent, by-laws and initial annual reports with financial statements (required to be submitted with applications to the Council); but also correspondence, MCSA special committee reports on the agency or its field of endeavour, and relevant newsletters, brochures or pamphlets. Some also provide copies of their own submissions to government, or Federation and Red Feather Budget Committees.

Publications (MSCA and Member Organizations)

These are materials published by the Council as such, or independently by its members. With respect to the former, the MCSA issued numerous documents produced in the course of its operations (initially from the New Birks Building, 10 Cathcart Street, and sometimes, also in early days, from no stated location; then from 1421 Atwater Avenue and subsequently its long-standing 1040 Atwater Avenue address). Many of these it listed in a cumulative Index to Publications composed of four chronological·Series· (file 464), nominally starting in 1919 and ending in 1968, though the first actual entry in the Index is dated 1934. The contents of the Publications (MCSA and Member Organizations) Series, however, span 1920 - 1969; and, while they do not comprise every item published by headquarters or members, do reflect those in practice filed as the series title indicates. (The Council routinely published its Annual Reports and the proceedings of Annual Meetings, but these are classified together as a separate series) .

The materials contained in Publications (MCSA and Member Organizations) embrace a range of categories, but prominent are the Commentator and Comment newsletters; service directories and guides; briefs, reports, studies and surveys; and institute, conference and workshop proceedings. Following the Council's usage, many of these materials also appear in other series. While the large majority were published by the MCSA, a few, like Administration of a Chronic Disease Hospital: ' Maimonides Hospital and Home for the Aged (file 1132), Montreal Parks and Playgrounds Association Incorporated: A Half Century of Community Service, 1902-1952 (file 1133), or the collection of articles by the Royal Victoria Hospital's Social Service Department (file 1052), are productions of member organizations.

Montreal Council of Social Agencies

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