History

Throughout Canada, the period following the Second World War was one of major adjustments for families and individuals, for local governments and economies, and for every segment of society. While some families were attempting to cope with the loss of loved ones, others were being reunited for the first time in some years. Servicemen were returning to their home communities and attempting to adapt to a changed society and frequently, to changed families. Social mores had been altered dramatically. For example the mass industrialization of women during the war, with consequent changes in family roles and responsibilities, created a situation which had been unthinkable a few short years before. Widespread unemployment and a housing shortage contributed to the upheaval that many families experienced in the years following the war. Fortunately, some positive changes resulted from negative situations as communities responded to their problems in creative ways. Governments and social agencies undertook a variety of innovative measures to assist their communities in coping with these changes, while citizens who had previously directed their energies towards the war effort turned their attention to the problems of their communities. These families - with their marital problems, problems within parent-child relationships, problems with disturbed adolescents, and a host of other personal difficulties - seemed to have no place to turn for counselling and assistance. Potential help arrived for many of Windsor's citizens in 1947 when the Catholic Family Service Bureau was established in order to provide casework services and counselling to Catholic families. However, in the absence of a family service organization for the other 60% of Windsor's population, there was no place for non-catholic families to turn for help. In response to the requests from the Children's Aid Society, The Salvation Army and the would-be Big Brothers, the Community Welfare Council established a Family Services Committee to study the question of how to provide family services to the Windsor area.

The first meeting of the Family Services Committee was held June 24th, 1948 in the board room of the Community Fund. Executive Director of the Catholic Family Service Bureau, pointed out that Windsor was in need of agencies which could attend to "cases of family trouble where the situation has not yet reached the point where neighbours or others will report it". At the close of the initial meeting the Family Services Committee resolved to study the following alternatives;

establishing a Family Services Department of the C.A.S. and a separate Big Brother organization.
establishing separate Family and Big Brother organizations (with a view to the fact that girls might eventually need services, too).
an organization separate from the C.A.S. combining family services and services to disturbed youngsters.
all combined in a special department of C.A.S.

After studying the issue for a number of months, the Committee recommended that a new social agency should be set up which would provide broad casework services to families and children where no problem of child neglect existed. The participants decided that, in addition to providing free family counselling, the bureau would provide services ordinarily rendered by Big Brother and Big Sister groups in other cities, and that the bureau would make extensive use of carefully selected volunteer workers. The bureau would be concerned with all aspects of life and with matters which affect the development and maintenance of good family relations in the community.

In March 1949, the committee presented it's final report to a general meeting of the Community Welfare Council, and the first Board of Directors of the new family service agency was elected. All in all the board of 21 citizens included clergymen, business people, professionals, teachers, a policeman, a union representative, and people from the Catholic, Jewish and Afri-Canadian communities.

On April 29, 1949, the Windsor Daily Star reported that the Family Service Bureau of Windsor, which was described as "a trail blazing agency in Canadian social work", was ready to function immediately and was now awaiting the appointment of a director. In October 1949, the board and the Community Welfare Council announced that after having searched for sometime for a qualified man to fill the position of Executive director, they had finally found one in Ian C. Johnston, whom the Star described as a "prominent social service worker in Toronto". By the time the Family Service Bureau of Windsor opened it's doors to the public in January 1950, only one staff person had been secured for the agency: Miss Betty McRae, the stenographer. When the bureau opened it was one of only ten member agencies in the Community. From its first day of operation in January 1950 until January 1958, the Family Service Bureau of Windsor was located in the former Tuscarora Street School at 737 Louis Avenue.

The combination of referrals from other agencies and the Windsor Daily Star's enthusiastic reporting of every phase of the Bureau's development since March 1949 resulted in a torrent of applications for help in the agency's first 9 months of operation. Help for family problems was usually sought by the wife/mother, and, typically, the problems involved excessive drinking and family violence. Many of the applications dealt with marital problems, parent-child relationships, or individuals who were finding it difficult to adjust in the community. The bureau's casework services were so much in demand throughout the 1950s that a long waiting list resulted: at certain points during that decade, the wait for services could last up to a year.

The ramifications of the recent war continued to pose difficulties for family life. Families of servicemen who were still in the armed forces came to the Bureau for help on a frequent basis. After the war the Department of National Defense had cut off assigned pay to wives of servicemen, leaving the amount of money to be given to one's family entirely up to the individual serviceman. This policy resulted in hardships for many soldiers' families, especially those who could not effectively use the courts to demand support payments because the husband/father was stationed in another province. In response to this problem the Family Service Bureau petitioned the Department of National Defense to protect the servicemen's families by maintaining the assigned pay policy. The Bureau's efforts in this regard were unsuccessful; however, the Bureau was able to collaborate with the Department of Veterans' Affairs in order to see that the needs of veterans' families were met. One grateful wife penned a letter in which she wrote:

"My husband drew unemployment up to the time he received his army pension from the D.V.A. This pension was well able to keep food on our table and pay the necessary bills, but my husband would take it and pay his rent and give me $5.00 per month to feed the baby and myself. He made sure he had a roof over his head when he came home plastered. In the meantime, I was going from church to church to try and get a voucher for some food, which I had no need to do. It was the last day of January 1956 when I went to the Salvation Army on Victoria and University and they gave me a voucher for $5.00 which I appreciated very much. That time I went to the D.V.A. and showed Mr. Atkinson the voucher for food. He immediately took the matter over and he had the complete cheque sent to the Family Service Bureau. They called my husband and I to go for an interview. He went once and the conditions did not agree with him so he stayed away. But with me it sure was a God's blessing in disguise. The way the Bureau handled it was quite satisfactory to me. Each week I received a certain amount for that week. This way I had food for myself and the baby... Through the Family Service Bureau I am able to hold my head high and get along like anyone else."

In light of the post-war economic upheaval of the times, it was not surprising that families came to the agency frequently in search of emergency financial relief. Many of these families were transient families who had migrated to Windsor looking for jobs and had run out of money. The Board's position was that in the post-war climate, counselling without monetary relief is worthless. However as the decade progressed and the roles of an ever-increasing number of community agencies became clarified, the Board came to the conclusion that all relief should be terminated because the Family Service Bureau was, after all, a counselling service, and that rather than supplementing the incomes of Windsor's low income families, the Bureau should brig more pressure on those sources which should provide financial help, such as the City of Windsor's Social Service Department. By the end of the decade, the Bureau had ceased to lend money to its clients. In May of 1953 the Board voted that only families should be served at the agency, but in 1954 revised its policy to state that single individuals could receive counselling but not financial assistance from the Bureau.

After it's first year of operation, the Bureau advertised its services more aggressively. During the latter half of the 1950s, the bureau began to sponsor professional development institutes on a variety of topics, events which were attended by many community workers and professionals. The Bureau also promoted its services through the Windsor Daily Star, CBE radio and CKLW radio and television, a fact which may have contributed to the increasing number of applicants who came on their own, without being referred, as the decade progressed.

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the Family Service Bureau's early achievements was the fact that all of these services were provided despite a rather high staff turnover rate which could have potentially hampered the agency. The bureau suffered for several years from the problems common then to all social agencies. Several efforts had been made to recruit social workers to work at the Bureau, but these efforts had only minimal effects. Part of the recruitment strategy included presenting the agency as a good place to work with progressive programming and professional standards. Finding qualified workers was often a problem.

Toward s the end of 1957, the City informed the Board of Directors that the agency would have to leave it's original location at 737 Louis Avenue. In 1958, the agency acquired new offices in a house at 1410 Ouellette Avenue. The change in the physical environment was accompanied by a quest for a new, better-defined identity for the Family Service Bureau of Windsor. In 1959, the Bureau began to meet the needs of working people by remaining open on Monday and Wednesday evenings and Saturdays. Over the next two years, specialized programs such as the Bureau's credit counselling services gradually fell by the wayside, but in some way this may have enabled the agency to focus more concertedly on its more general family and individual counselling services. The Bureau also aimed to reduce duplication of services provided by other agencies so that workers' efforts could be more focused on counselling and therapy.

In the ten years since its establishment, the Family Service Bureau of Windsor had made many gains. From it's modest roots, it has turned into one of "Windsor's great agencies for good" (as reported in the Windsor Daily Star). The agency had made a contribution to the development of improved services and living conditions throughout the community. More importantly, it had improved the lives of thousands of families and individuals in the Windsor area. In the years ahead, it would make many more gains.

New Challenges, New Services, 1960 - 1969

The Bureau's financial situation, which had been quite poor in the 1950s, deteriorated further in the early 1960s when Windsor was gripped by a recession that resulted in dramatically reduced funding to charitable organizations. The Bureau which relied on the United Community Services for 100% of it's funding, was forced to find alternate sources of money in order to survive. In collaboration with the Board, Edwin Clarke worked to introduce a new system of fees which would enable the Bureau to survive despite decreased assistance from the United Community Services. In 1963 the Bureau introduced a system of fee paying, charged according to income and size of family.

By 1964 the economy had improved substantially but, the greatly improved economic climate did not diminish the need for Family Therapy. During the final 2 thirds of the decade, the Bureau was able to add new programs and services to it's core service of counselling families and individuals under stress. The Bureau conducted outreach in the local secondary schools by providing posters which advertised the agency's counselling services to adolescents, and by providing films and lectures to Health Education courses. In 1964 the Bureau's counselling services were being used increasingly by teenagers. In 1965 the Bureau devoted further effort to the matter of meeting adolescents needs when caseworkers were dispatched to the Windsor "Y" to work with teenagers there. In 1967, a self-help group for teenaged boys was established at the agency by a caseworker, and in 1969 (at the request of Seminole library, which was having problems with loitering teens), the Bureau joined with the Windsor Separate School Board to organize recreational activities in a school gym in the Seminole area.

By the end of the decade, teenage pressures and problems were considerably different than what they had been a decade earlier. in 1969, the Bureau collaborated with the Alcoholism and Drug Addiction Research Foundation and the Catholic Family Service Bureau to provide counselling and education to combat teenage drug use - a problem which was reputed to be particularly prevalent in Windsor's middle - and high-income areas where a combination of family problems and teenagers access to unusually large amounts of money often led to adolescent drug abuse. Indeed, the 1960s saw a shift in the socioeconomic characteristics of the Bureau's clients.

In 1964 the agency assisted the Windsor Group Therapy Project in their work with school groups. In 1965, the Bureau established a satellite office once a week at F.W. Begley School Recreational Centre. Out of the entire decade, 1967 was the most significant year in the life of the Family Service Bureau of Windsor and it's clients. The agency moved amid much fan-fare, to newly renovated premises in a converted machine shop at 35 Ellis Street East.

Altogether, the 1960s were an extraordinary decade in the life of Family Service Bureau of Windsor, characterized by increased expansion into the community and increased services for every segment of the population. Nonetheless, the greatest achievements continued to be, as they had been, the changes made in the lives of the people who interacted with the Bureau's caseworkers. In a thank you letter written in the early 1970s a woman spoke of the impact that the Bureau had on her throughout the '60s:

"Nine years ago my home with my husband and children fell apart out West. Being unable to cope alone, I came back to Windsor, knowing there was little or no security from the relatives, but at least the place was familiar. I was a mixed-up, backward immature grown-up, with three young children to rear, and no know-how. I needed help quickly, with emotional support. I found that help in Family Service Bureau counselling I still progress with today....Really, this place is my foster home. There is no service greater in kind and result than this house of compassion where happiness will continue to grow for those who seek it, if you will let it."

The 1969 annual report explained why casework had remained the primary focus of the agency: "Social casework has been the champion of the individual.... All people have the right to maximum happiness".

A Dream Come True, 1970-1979

The 1960s had wrought many changes in the Family Service Bureau of Windsor. In the 1970s with new challenges and opportunities, the bureau would undergo even more dramatic changes. In 1973, the Bureau moved it's office at 35 Ellis East to 1400 Windsor Avenue. Then, in 1976, The Bureau moved to new offices at the base of Carnegie Towers at 450 Victoria Ave. The agency took a very significant step in the late 70s when major changes to the system of services for individuals with developmental challenges in Ontario caused the Bureau to begin offering protective services for adults with developmental disabilities in Windsor. The Bureau negotiated a contract to house the APSW Program (and the Adult Protective Service Worker, or APSW) for Windsor. From that point forward, the Bureau would be one of the agencies responsible for providing case management, trusteeship, medical/dental coordination, and instrumental counselling. The individual would come to the agency voluntarily; the service was never to be forced on them.

In 1974 a branch office was opened at Nicklin House, 88 Erie South, in Leamington, where several successive caseworkers provided services to Leamington residents once a week over the years. The in 1975 the Bureau opened an office at the Essex Medical Centre in Essex once a week. These events led to the renaming of the agency as the Family Service Bureau of Windsor and Essex County, in 1978. In 1979 the Leamington office moved to 16 Erie Street North and then to the South Essex Community Council's new premises at 73 Erie Street South.

In 1976 Mary Snellgrove of the Windsor Board of Education and the principle of Roseville Public School contacted the Bureau about the need for family services in East Windsor. The Bureau responded quickly, establishing a two room branch office at Hawthorne Plaza, 2659 Lauzon Rd.

One of the most memorable changes in the Bureau during the 1970s was the establishment of the Plays for Living repertory theatre company which toured the community, performing plays about family problems and social justice issues. In 1974, a federal grant of over $18,000.00 was received allowing the Bureau to set up a 6 month theatre project for the Plays for Living company. The company performed a total of 127 times during a 26 week run, for about 6000 people in Windsor and Essex County. After each performance a discussion leader encouraged audience members to talk about the issues raised in the play they had just seen - issues such as marital conflicts, dealing with death of loved ones, family violence, teenage pressures, alcoholism, stereotyping of disabled adults, the problems of senior citizens, and the dilemma of the working mother.

The most significant landmark event that took place during this decade was the Bureau's 25th anniversary in 1973 (counting forward from the first discussion of the Family Service Committee in 1948). Looking back at the 25 years that had gone before.

Through all of the challenges that occurred in the 1970s, casework remained the primary focus of the agency.

Hard Times, Great Expectations, 1980 - 1989

With each year, throughout the 1970s, the Family Service Bureau had seemed to reverberate with more and more positive anticipation and a sense of great things to come, but the new decade did not begin happily for the agency. The recession that had gripped Windsor in the latter half of the 1970s appeared to catch up with the Bureau, which entered the new decade with a massive deficit. Sever financial constraints made it necessary to close the Leamington office of the Bureau in March, 1980. As the decade passed, however, the agency's fortunes improved considerably. Finding new sources of funding allowed the Bureau to reduce it's dependency on the United Way funding from 97% in 1971 to 65% in 1981.

In 1980, the Bureau negotiated a contract with the City of Windsor, which enabled the Bureau to invoice the City for part of the cost of counselling social assistance recipients. In 1981, the Bureau and the County of Essex negotiated a similar contract for services to county residents. In that same year the agency also established a contract with the Ministry of Community and Social Services to provide counselling services to recipients of Mother's Allowance and other Ministry funding arrangements.

In 1987, a corporate administrative structure was set into place and the Bureau changed it's name to Family Service Windsor: however, despite the streamlining of the name, the agency still intended to serve all of Essex County.

In the 1980s even the Bureau's cherished Family Life Education Program was at the mercy of the marketplace. The agency's financial instability forced it to require that all courses be self-supporting. Some courses had to be cancelled when there were not enough registrants to make them profitable ventures. In 1983, this fate befell all of the courses which had been planned. Nonetheless, many courses did proceed over the space of the decade. In the 1980s, as in the previous decades the Bureau continued to make it's presence known in the community through a variety of means.

In 1987 a series of articles about family problems and family services were submitted to the Windsor Star and published therein as a joint project of the Family Service Bureau and the Catholic Family Service Bureau.

The Plays for Living Company also contributed a great deal both towards the dissemination of information about the Bureau's services and towards encouraging debate and dialogue about the issues affecting society and the family. Disbanded after the 1978-79 season, the company was reestablished in 1983 with help from Professor Dan Kelly of the University of Windsor's School of Dramatic Arts.

Throughout the 1980s, separating, separated, divorcing and divorced couples, as well as stepfamilies were coming to the Bureau for assistance at an unprecedented rate. This situation lead to an increased emphasis on services for separated or divorced couples, their children, and frequently their new partners and their children. In 1986, Edwin Clarke would tell the Windsor Star that "we're helping people have a satisfactory divorce whereas 20 years ago we would have counted it a failure if they separated".

In 1988 years of debate about the need to integrate persons with developmental disabilities into the community culminated in the release of the document Challenges and Opportunities: Community Living for People with Developmental Handicaps, from Ontario's Ministry of Community and Social Services. Long time APSW Jan Brown explained that before the 1980s "we used to do business in the old way, where the professional made the decisions for individuals, whereas now people are making decisions for themselves. And that's the way it should be".

From the hard times of the early 1980s to the good times of the latter half of the decade, Family Service Windsor had successfully responded to new problems, trends and community needs with innovative programs and services which helped families and individuals to enhance their mental health and which enabled the agency itself to survive. As the 1980s rolled to a close, the staff and friends of Family Service Windsor could look forward to a new decade with nothing less than great expectations.

A Scene of Changes, 1990-1995

The 1990s were a time of significant change at Family Service Windsor - a time of growth, a time of improvement, and a time typified by the triumph of the agency's will over the seemingly insurmountable odds presented by unfavourable economic times. After the good times experienced in the previous several years, yet another recession and decrease in the Windsor area work force resulted in a slight reduction of funding to the agency early in the decade; ironically, at the same time, this unwelcome reprise of the previous decade's "Hard times" led to an increased need for the agency's services. As the decade progressed, government cutbacks resulted in scaling back of much of the funding which Family Service Windsor had counted on in previous years. The counselling program suffered in 1995 when the Ministry of Community and Social Services withdrew it's 80% funding of the purchase of counselling agreements which the agency had with the city and county social services departments. A reduction in funding for the Residential Placement Advisory Committee forced it's two full-time staff to reduce their hours with RPAC to half-time. In addition, after 1991, the Family Life Education program was shelved due to the loss of United Way funding for the program and the concurrent loss of the Family Life Education coordinator. While the placement of social work students at Family Service Windsor continued in the 1990s, the agency was forced to reduce it's efforts in the area of professional development seminars and workshops for human service providers in the community.

The staff of the agency responded to the overall situation by graciously accepting staff reductions, unpaid holidays, and other unpleasant measures in 1994 and 1995; their unselfishness allowed the agency's core services to continue relatively unscathed by the economic difficulties.

A highly dramatic, symbolic confirmation of the need to accept change occurred on St. Patrick's day, 1994, when an anonymous hydro worker's accidental attachment of live wire to a water main resulted in the agency's very own Great Flood. In the wake of the catastrophe the agency's office (located in the basement of a high-rise building) had to be substantially refurbished. It forced a new beginning of sorts: a new era in the life of Family Service Windsor.

In 1991, Family Service Windsor was asked to take on the Coming Home Project which would help individuals with developmental disabilities, coming from institutions, back to their home communities, plan for their lives outside the institution and support them during the transition back to their home communities. In the spirit of changes introduced throughout the system of developmental services, the Coming Home Project aimed to ensure an empowered individual planning process for the former institutional residents and for their families.

In 1993, the Ontario Association for Community Living honoured the project with an award in recognition of it's innovative new services to facilitate community living; Family Service Windsor's two staff members who had worked on the project, Jeff Phillips and Marlyn Shervill, received special mention. Unfortunately, in 1994, Ministry funding for the Coming Home Project was depleted, but the Multi-Year Planning Committee was so committed to the continuation of the process that Windsor Community Living Support Services and the Essex County Association for Community Living continued to fund the project on a partial basis so that it's goals could be completed through 1995. In 1995, the Coming Home Project ended, but Family Service Windsor continued to provide new services in this area, in cooperation with other agencies, through the Innovention Project. This project was coordinated by Jeff Phillips of Family Service Windsor and was aimed at broad systemic change in developmental services, with increased emphasis on choice and self direction.

The first half of the 1990s was also a time when entirely new service directions were pursued. In 1990, Family Service Windsor offered a series of Saturday workshops entitled "Focus on Adoption". Social workers Bev Thompson and Dorit Silver co-led workshops or discussion groups for adopted adolescents aged 13-17, aimed at giving adopted teens an opportunity to share feelings and concerns with other adopted teens. They also led workshops for parents of 7-12 year old adopted children, aimed at helping parents to cope with the problems encountered when raising adopted children.

Renewed partnerships were also a key component of the agency's success in the early 1990s. The transformation of Family Service Windsor to a sales orientation, foretold by Eileen Jackson in 1976, culminated in the 1990s in a more aggressive pursuit of Employee Assistance Plan contracts. The agency embarked on a partnership with Credit Counselling Services of Southwestern Ontario and Catholic Family Services to jointly market and deliver Employee Assistance Programs to the local community. Profitable initiatives like these were intended to enable the agency to continue serving families and individuals to a degree that might not have been otherwise possible.

Looking Forward, Looking Back, 1996-2001

As the twentieth century drew to a close, Family Service Windsor continued to adapt to fiscal constraints, constant restructuring, and major social change with remarkable resourcefulness and creativity. The agency managed not only to survive, but to thrive amid this upheaval. In addition, Family Service Windsor seemed to look increasingly forward and back - moving forward towards efficient use of emergent technologies, moving forward to address emerging social concerns, while increasingly looking back to the original concept of the agency as articulated in 1948.

The widespread fiscal distress that typified the late 1990s failed to limit Family Service Windsor's contributions to the community... even despite occasional reductions to staffing levels. The agency managed to maintain a balanced budget from 1994 through the end of the century.

In 1995 Family Service Windsor and the City of Windsor Social Services Department developed a joint program to offer adolescent mediation to teens between the ages of 16 and 18 who had erupted from their families. The project represented an attempt to bring families together and to stop the cycle of young people entering the welfare system, while encouraging the young individuals to stay in school. The project, however, was short-lived because changes in provincial regulations affecting this population's eligibility for social assistance.

In 1996 at the request of the Ministry of Community and Social Services, the agency expanded its Adult Protective Service Worker program by two staff members in order to provide service to Essex County. Soon thereafter, the APSW program underwent a name change which reflected a major philosophical shift: thenceforth the APSW staff at Family Service Windsor would be known as "Advocacy, Planning and Support Workers". In addition, in 1997, the Innoventions project was replaced by a new Brokerage Project, which was housed at Family Service until 1999.

In 1999 the agency began to offer counselling services in Leamington again, using an office at South Essex Community Council.

The creation of the Family Service Windsor - Essex County Foundation in 2001 affirmed the agency's commitment to seek alternative funding sources for it's vast array of services and programs. The second most recent, visible transformation has been a name change to Family Service Windsor - Essex County, a change which has reaffirmed the agency's commitment to serve both the City and County.

As Family Service Windsor - Essex County begins it's second half-century of service to Windsor and Essex County, the agency appears to have "come full circle", starting again where it began when its doors first opened fifty years ago, with preeminent emphasis on services to the total family, including children.