Rose John McHugh

Background

Rose John McHugh was born on July 11, 1881 in Marshall, Michigan. She was the daughter of John J. and Annie Elizabeth Devereaux McHugh.

Education

McHugh attended the University of Chicago, from which she graduated in 1905 with a Ph. B. degree.

Career

McHugh did private family welfare work in Chicago and New York City until after World War I, when she became the director of the Central Division of the American Red Cross. After the war McHugh joined the staff of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, acting as assistant director and field secretary of the Social Action department as well as director of field studies, social action department until 1931. She also served on the faculty of the Fordham School of Sociology and Social Service from 1931 to 1933 where she was director of fieldwork and at the same time special consultant to the Children's Bureau in Washington, D. C. In 1934 McHugh became assistant commissioner of social welfare for the state of New York. In 1937 she was appointed chief of the administrative surveys division in the Bureau of Public Assistance of the Social Security Board. She later served as Chief, Special Standards Section in the Social Security Administration, formed in 1946, of the Federal Security Agency. McHugh was also a consultant to the Bureau of Public Assistance over a sixteen-year period. She served as chairman of the Washington, D. C. , chapter of the American Association of Social Work from 1948 to 1950 and in the latter year was United States delegate to the Pan American Child Welfare Conference and a delegate to the White House Conference on Children. She was secretary of the Federal Security Agency's Committee on Aging and co-chairman of the first National Conference on Aging held in 1950 in Washington, D. C. , under the auspices of the Federal Security Agency. She died in Washington, D. C.

Achievements

• McHugh was a delegate to the Second International Gerontological Congress, held in St. Louis in 1951, and was one of the founders of the Gerontological Society.

Views

McHugh was an opponent of narrow professionalism. She asserted, for instance, that when dealing with immigrant families the caseworker should have a knowledge of the history, racial traits and customs, and the religious life of the community, so as to enhance "an understanding of the individual's attitude towards religion, morality and orderly habits of living. " In this, she was much influenced by the work and thought of Monsignor John A. Ryan.

Personality

McHugh was a short, dark-haired, quiet woman with a warm, attractive personality and enormous reserves of energy. She had a talent for organization and administration, informed by a strong social conscience and sense of the dignity of the individual. For example, in "Some Educational and Spiritual Aspects of Casework, " an address to the National Conference of Catholic Charities in 1924, she asserted that no formulas or methods are ever a substitute for the "thinking and human wisdom which a caseworker must bring to every problem. "

For most of her career McHugh specialized in child welfare; and her most significant contribution in this area, as in others, was her skill in bringing about cooperation between local, state, and federal government agencies and private organizations. Her warm sense of humanity and clear ideas of the rights of the individual led her constantly to seek to ameliorate social welfare training and bureaucratic procedures. In her later years McHugh concentrated on the needs of the elderly. She directed a major survey of shelter care for the aged in the United States between 1942 and 1944. She also helped organize the National Committee on the Aging as a subcommittee of the National Social Welfare Assembly.

Connections

Rose John never married.

Father:

John J. McHugh

Mother:

Annie Elizabeth Devereaux McHugh