ABSTRACT
This chapter considers applicants to the nine study agencies in terms of three kinds of trouble: whether they had ever received public assistance; whether they, or members of their immediate families, had undergone hospitalization for mental illness or mental retardation; and whether they had experienced episodes of having their children placed outside their homes. It also compares the agencies in terms of the proportion of clients drawn from each of the problem categories used in Part I. The three troubles chosen for analysis all represent grave disruptions of either family structure or personal integrity, and all indicate that formal controls had been exercised over the client and his family, probably with 254a minimum degree of compensating support. These are not, of course, the only indices of trouble; such important disruptions as imprisonment, expulsion from school, and illegitimacy are also indications of social and personal breakdown that occurred in the lives of many of the clients in the study. The choice of the three particular problems used here was made because the necessary information was available, but there is no reason to believe that the use of other indices would have led to qualitatively different conclusions.
