Special Message to the Congress Proposing the Allied Services Act of 1972

To the Congress of the United States:

In responding to steady public demand over recent decades for more and more human services, the Federal Government created a host of assistance programs designed to meet a wide variety of human needs.

These many programs were established one-by-one over a considerable number of years. Each of the target problems was examined in isolation, and a program to alleviate each problem was devised separately--without regard to programs which had been, or would be, developed for allied problems.

The result is that a compassionate government unwittingly created a bureaucratic jungle that baffles and shortchanges many citizens in need. The unintended administrative snarl wastes taxpayers' money. And it frustrates needed efforts to treat "the whole person."

The Allied Services Act of 1972, which I am proposing today, would give State and local officials authority to consolidate the planning and implementation of the many separate social service programs into streamlined, comprehensive plans--each custom-designed for a particular area.

Such plans could eventually make it possible to assess the total human service needs of an entire family at a single location with a single application. Most applicants need more than one service, and now must trudge to office after office applying for assistance from one program at a time--with the result that they may not obtain all the services they need, or may be 'discouraged altogether from seeking help.

The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare administers some 200 different human assistance programs in about a dozen major fields--to help needy citizens with such services as mental health, vocational rehabilitation, manpower training, food and nutrition, special programs for the aged, education, juvenile counseling, alcoholism and drug abuse, housing, and public health.

Each of these programs has its own eligibility rules, application forms, management, and administrative policies. Each program usually has its own office location and its own geographical coverage area.

Federal rules and regulations, in short, now keep each social service program locked up in a little world of its own. This is not only wasteful and inefficient it also prevents State and local efforts to close the gaps in social service delivery systems.

As I stated in my State of the Union Message this year, "We need a new approach to the delivery of social services-one which is built around people and not around programs. We need an approach which treats a person as a whole and which treats the family as a unit."

For the uninformed citizen in need, the present fragmented system can become a nightmare of confusion, inconvenience, and red tape.

The father of a family is helped by one program, his daughter by another, and his elderly parents by a third. An individual goes to one place for nutritional help, to another for health services, and to still another for educational counseling.

They are not the only victims of fragmented services--others include the taxpayers, and the public officials and government employees seeking to operate these diverse programs. Vast amounts of time, money, and energy, are expended in administrative procedures which overlap and duplicate--rather than being efficiently organized to help people.

The Allied Services Act of 1972 would give State and local governments greater legal freedom and planning tools needed for the long-overdue job of modernizing the deliver?- of social services into consolidated programs. This process would begin at the option of elected State and local officials, and would be highly responsive to their needs.

It would permit knowledgeable State and local people to break through rigid categorical walls, to open up narrow bureaucratic compartments, to consolidate and coordinate related programs in a comprehensive approach to related social aid problems--designed to match widely varying State and local needs.

Under the Act, the Federal Government would make dollars available for the costs of developing consolidated plans, and it would also be prepared to underwrite the administrative startup costs when the comprehensive services program went into effect.

To encourage and facilitate such unified services, the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare would be empowered by the Act to approve the transfer of up to 25 percent of any existing program's funds into any other purpose or programs involved in an approved local allied service plan--a logical flexibility now hindered by Federal program regulations.

The Secretary also could provide a waiver of any existing program regulation which barred or hampered an existing program from participating in such activity.

The Allied Services Act charts a new course for the delivery of social services. It is a complex reform proposal with many major ramifications for many established groups--government and private--- n the Federal, State, and local levels.

The consideration and eventual passage of this legislation by the Congress would only be a start. At the same time, human service delivery reform would have to be debated all across the country by affected governments and groups, in order to decide how they would make best use of the proposed freedoms and incentives in their particular areas.

This is one more effort by my Administration to make government more sensible, more responsive and more effective at the local level--where most citizens actually meet the practical impact of government.

In this important proposal, as in my recommendations for Revenue Sharing, we would summon forth the creative energies and the local expertise of State and local officials, rather than keeping them strapped in a straitjacket of inflexible Federal regulations.

They would be freed--and thus would be challenged--to direct the development of customized comprehensive social services plans to treat the special needs, resources and desires of their particular areas.

Such efforts should result in government built for people, geared for across-the-board performance, and designed for results rather than bureaucratic ritual.

If we bring this about, we shall not only be providing better social services--we also shall be taking a giant step toward the restoration of the people's confidence in the common sense performance of their government.

RICHARD NIXON

THE WHITE HOUSE,

May 18, 1972.