PBH Proposes Settlement House Plan Replacing Social Services Committee

Phillips Brooks House has submitted a new program to the Alliance of Cambridge Settlement Houses proposing sweeping changes in PBH's settlement house work in Cambridge.

Peter B. Rosenbaum '67, president of PBH, said yesterday that the new program, if approved by the Alliance, would be entirely run by students and be sponsored by the ACSH. This increase in PBH's autonomy will make the efforts of student volunteers more meaningful, he said.

PBH will provide all the mony for the project through independent fundraising.

The new program will probably replace the Social Services Committee in PBH. The Committee's effectiveness has fallen off during the past year. Rosenbaum said, due primarily to a decrease in interested volunteers. "The new program will gvie volunteers the say that they need if it is to have meaning for them."

Under the new plan, students will work intensively with small groups of children in the settlement houses starting next fall. The volunteers will work in pairs and be responsible to student coordinators. Each of the four Cambridge settlement houses will have two coordinators.

They would meet once a week, and be in frequent contact with the professional staff of the settlement houses.

In order to deal with issues involving all four settlement houses. Rindge Jefferson, an employee of the Alliance, would head the project, and meet often with student coordinators.

As the volunteers become acquainted with the children, the program aims to develop rapport with the parents and to obtain their feelings about the problems of the program and community.

Eventually, Phillip W. Rabinowitz '67, one of the four creators of the project and head of PBH's Roosevelt Towers Program, plans to get the parents of the neighborhood working together in community improvement.

If the Alliance does not accept its offer, PBH might bring the program to Jefferson Park, a Cambridge housing development, or submit it to the Cambridge Office for Economic Opportunity which could provide the necessary floor-space for the project.

At any rate the new program will probably mean the end of an era for PBH, Rabinowitz said. The Social Service Committee, which the program will replace, was the first committee in PBH history back in 1894. Many of PBH's present projects are outgrowths of the soon-to-be-defunct Committee.