Cross-Currents in Religion

Social Workers' Ears Help Church 'Listen'

[Photo caption]: Tsuguo Ikeda, left, and Ralph Toporoff with members of the Atlantic Street Center

By Lane Smith

Religion Editor, The Times

The church doesn't always preach. Sometimes it listens.

At Atlantic Street Center, a venerable Methodist institution that operates under the wings of the church's Women's Division of Christian Service and United Good Neighbors, the church listens through the trained ears of social workers.

As such the center is hardly a church. It is a social agency, whose director, Tsuguo Ikeda, is a Methodist layman with a master's degree in social work.

The center reflects the highly specialized language of social workers. But if their words don't say it, the actions of the center adhere to the basic Christian concept of compassion.

"Because your brother is in need, you serve him," Ikeda said, answering the question of the church's role in social work.

THE CENTER deals with what the sociologist calls "hostile, acting-out-adolescent boys." In other words they are boys who, rebelling against lives of frustration, abuse, neglect, futility, have come to the edge of delinquency.

[illegible] are facing at home, in the school and in the community.

"Such problems could be truancy, drinking, stealing and fighting."

THE GROUP sessions, restricted to nine members, are primarily for the building of relationships: Boys with boys and boys with social worker.

"We try to convince them that there are persons concerned with their welfare," Ikeda said. "This is not easy. Their dealings with adults generally have been in a punishment relationship.

"We want them to see that there is hope for their lives and that they have worth. We don't use these sessions for moralizing although we don't condone wrongs."

IKEDA SAID a major achievement is keeping the boys from dropping out of school.

"And we know failure," Ikeda said. "About one of every nine boys who comes here winds up in an institution. But we also see hope and we keep persisting after it."

Ikeda has two full-time social workers, Bill Berleman and Ralph Toporoff, and graduate-student help.

Atlantic Street Center was begun in 1909 [cut off]