Reflections on Work in a Community Service Agency

For the past eighteen years I have worked for Oberlin Community Services Council, a town social service agency. I was hired originally in 1978 as Caseworker and have been Executive Director since 1981. This work has become both my living and my career. Although it might seem as if I have been doing the same job for many years, in fact the nature of the work has been quite varied. As a result, my own perspective has changed over time. In this article, I reflect on some of the changes that have occurred and critical issues the agency has faced over the past eighteen years.

Oberlin Community Services Council (OCSC) was founded in 1955 by a local group of concerned citizens to provide and coordinate social and health services for low-income persons and senior citizens. United Way, local churches, and individuals supplied the initial funding. When I began work for Oberlin Community Services, I was a single mother with a college age daughter and an eleven year old son. Even though I had a Ph.D. in plasma physics, I had not become a practicing scientist due to my husband's career, my family responsibilities, and frequent moves. I had experienced a long period of unemployment after a divorce and had been unable to resume a science career. Social service work appealed to me because it built on my experiences as an activist in the women's movement, as a volunteer in a counseling center, and as a caseworker for the Welfare Department in Chicago in my twenties.

In 1978, OCSC programs included casework and emergency food assistance to low-income Oberlin residents, coordination of community holiday giving, meals on wheels, senior citizen bus transportation, camp scholarships for children, and a senior citizen craft room. Several county organizations, like the Lorain County Health Department, held clinics and sent outreach workers to the agency. In 1996, OCSC offers many of the same services available in 1978. However, some important changes have happened over the years: the OCSC emergency assistance program now serves a larger geographical area that includes all of southern Lorain County; a math tutoring program for public school youth has been added; and a private transit company operates bus service for Oberlin. Senior citizen casework, the craft room and other recreation programs are provided by another agency, Oberlin Seniors of Neighborhood House.

As Caseworker I gained an awareness of the extent of poverty in Oberlin, the needs of low-income persons, and the limited resources available to address them. Although I had my own personal struggles as a single parent, I realized that I had more life choices than OCSC clients because of my education and economically privileged background. I learned in my job how to be effective in an unfamiliar professional and social environment. My co-workers were women of my mother's generation in their 60s to 80s, who had held these jobs for many years and did not depend on them for their livelihood. The majority had lived in Oberlin for most or all their lives. While their life experiences were similar to those of our senior clients, my main concern was how to support my children and myself and rebuild my life after divorce. I discovered quickly the limits of what I could do within a tradition-bound organization. I therefore concentrated on providing quality service rather than trying to make changes. My desire and ability to shape programs increased over the years as staff changed, new social problems emerged in the community, and opportunities arose to address them.

The town of Oberlin has changed over the past eighteen years both physically and demographically. For example, ethnic restaurants have replaced hardware and drug stores downtown; Kendal At Oberlin, a continuing care facility, was opened in 1993 and brought new people to the community; and Westervelt Hall was renovated to become the New Union Center for the Arts in 1996. Comparative census information from 1980 and 1990 shows that the total population decreased from 8,660 people to 8,191. This loss was due largely to a significant decrease in the number of children in the population. Meanwhile the percentage of senior citizens increased. The most outstanding difference was the tremendous increase in the number of people living below the poverty level, from 1,160 in 1980 to 2,105 in 1990. While the percentage of the elderly below the poverty level remained roughly the same, the number of children below poverty level nearly doubled in ten years.

OCSC has evolved over the years from a small volunteer group of citizens to a professionally managed agency, consolidating a variety of social services for Oberlin and southern Lorain County under one umbrella. It has changed from an isolated organization to one that is interdependent with other town and county organizations such as the City, Schools, Oberlin College, and the Second Harvest Food Bank. The agency, once funded completely by local residents, has developed multiple sources of financial support including government and foundation grants, United Way funds, and donations. Along the way, OCSC, like most agencies, has faced both major opportunities to change as well as insecurities in staffing, financial support, and physical location, currently a major issue.

OCSC's emergency assistance program was expanded in the early 1980s when the County Cupboard Food Bank (now Second Harvest) was founded to provide free food to those in need. OCSC became a food distribution site for Oberlin and southern Lorain County. Lorain County was particularly hard hit by deteriorating economic conditions due to a national recession. Unemployment rates rose and high paying manufacturing jobs were being replaced increasingly by lower wage service jobs. In response, the federal government established distributions of agricultural surplus commodities like cheese, flour, cornmeal, and butter to senior citizens and low-income persons. By the mid-80s, the number of clients seeking food from OCSC rose from about 30 individuals to close to 100 per month. The agency also began to receive government, church, Salvation Army, and Red Cross funds to help clients pay for utility bills, prescriptions, and other needs.

OCSC has maintained service to the community in the face of various budget cuts. For example, although client needs increased in the 1980s, the local resources to meet them diminished. United Way reduced funding to its agencies by 10% on short notice in 1987 because layoffs had created shortfalls in their collections. As a result, OCSC froze salaries for three years. From this experience, I learned that agencies need to diversify funding sources. We established an endowment fund to create more financial stability. The second funding loss came after we used federal funds to expand our information/referral program and hired a new staff member. Within a year and a half, the funds were cut, creating a problem about how to pay an extra employee. From this experience I learned that any expansion of agency programs must be sustainable.

In the fall of 1991 the agency unexpectedly lost funding for one of its major programs, bus transportation for the town. Back in 1976 a group of concerned citizens had raised funds and purchased a van to establish a dial-a ride bus program. Oberlin began to receive state grants, starting in 1981, to purchase vehicles and operate a bus system under a federal program for rural transit. Although the state grants were funneled through the Lorain County Transit Board, the program was locally operated and the City of Oberlin supplied the necessary matching money for the grant. By 1991, we owned two buses and employed three part-time drivers, as well as a dispatcher and a bookkeeper. In October 1991, we were notified abruptly that the county was privatizing the service to consolidate its urban and rural routes at the beginning of 1992. We responded to this decision with anger and disbelief, aware that county and state politics had played a major role.

OCSC had founded and managed the bus program competently for sixteen years and would not give it up without a fight. (We knew that the loss of funding meant employee layoffs.) We mobilized bus users to sign petitions that we sent to the county and state politicians and also undertook several levels of an official grievance. Ultimately, this time-consuming process did not reverse the decision. Four long-term employees were laid off at the end of 1991: a single mother; two senior citizens supplementing their modest retirement incomes, and a woman whose husband who had been disabled in a truck accident. The human cost to the employees of agency down-sizing was devastating: two workers became agency clients by necessity and one worker became deeply depressed.

Meanwhile, the agency had become a member of the Oberlin Interagency Council, a group formed in 1991 by representatives from education, social service, city government, and the health, cultural, religious, and advocacy groups to share information and develop collaborative solutions to town problems. Beginning in 1992, OCSC worked intensively on two collaborative projects: the development of a guide to town and county services, "Resources for the Oberlin Community," and the establishment of math tutoring programs for academically disadvantaged youth. OCSC took on a larger role in the Interagency Council when the Nord Family Foundation funded a staff person for the Council, starting in 1993. OCSC began to supply office space and support for the staff person, became fiscal agent for the grant, and I became Co-Chair of the organization.

OCSC soon afterward began to explore new program directions with a particular interest in addressing youth problems in Oberlin. When the Oberlin Interagency Council identified math tutoring as a community need, we felt we had the capacity to help meet it. I saw an opportunity to apply my science education and prior teaching experience. Therefore in 1992, we applied for and received funding from the Nord Family Foundation to offer summer math workshops for high school students to prepare them for the Ohio Ninth Grade Proficiency Test. We also started an after-school math tutoring/service learning program for fifth graders with funding from the Ohio Department of Education under "Serve America." The math tutoring programs have become an important part of the agency activities over the last four years. About 285 public school students have been tutored by over a hundred Oberlin College students, community persons, and OCSC staff members, including me.

Simultaneously OCSC was strengthening its links to Oberlin College. OCSC has employed college students eligible for work-study since 1983 and has benefited from student volunteers doing practica and winter term projects. The math tutoring programs have brought a new dimension to the OCSC-College connection. They offer college students experience in tutoring and service learning while helping public school students gain essential academic skills. The appointment of Nancy Dye as president of Oberlin College in 1994 and the establishment of the Center for Service and Learning has brought even closer collaboration. In fact, because OCSC had employed, trained, and mentored so many college students to make productive contributions to the community, OCSC became the first recipient of the Award of Community Partner of the Year from the Center in 1996.

Over the past few years I have found new and satisfying ways to employ different aspects of my background in the agency operation. I have applied my experience as a math teacher to develop curriculum and train tutors to work with fifth graders and high school students. Moreover, I have used my prior training in group dynamics to supervise college and high school student tutors and to enhance cooperation between school children and adult volunteers in the tutoring programs. I also put to use an ongoing interest in technology by computerizing the operations of the agency as a way to increase efficiency at a time when resources to hire secretarial staff were scarce. When I chose to work at OCSC many years ago, I had no idea that in this career I would be able to integrate my background in science with social service, so I was delighted when Oberlin College recognized my work by giving me the Award for Distinguished Service to the Community at Commencement in 1991.

In 1996, I am in a different place in my life. I have become part of the older generation, even though I keep fit by swimming daily and developing new technical skills. My two children are adults established in jobs. Only one of my OCSC co-workers is a contemporary; the rest are members of my children's generation or younger. The support staff consists of Oberlin College students hired under work-study: ten part-time workers during the school year and three full-time workers over the summer. They are concerned with academic, social, financial, and family issues and are making a transition into a career. The agency focus has been broadened to include the education of college students. Although OCSC continues to serve people of all ages, public school youth young enough to be my grandchildren have become an increasing part of the agency clientele.

In my eighteen years at OCSC, I have learned about operation of a grassroots agency in a small town. A local agency like OCSC can remain in existence only if it responds flexibly to changing community needs, collaborates with other organizations to solve problems, and works hard. With welfare "reform" and the reduction in federal funding for social programs, local organizations will feel more pressure on them to develop creative solutions to social problems. At the same time, more small agencies are merging for economic reasons into larger and consequently less responsive organizations covering larger geographical areas. Over the next decade, Oberlin as a town will be faced with the challenge to continue its tradition of taking care of its own disadvantaged citizens by supporting the work of agencies like Oberlin Community Services.

Ann L. Fuller, Executive Director, Affiliate Scholar, Oberlin College
Oberlin Community Services Council
129 South Main Street
774-6579 (phone and fax) E-mail: ZFULLER@Oberlin.edu