The Charitable Foundations of Social Assistance

1 PhD Student, Doctoral School of Sociology, “Al. I. Cuza” University of Iasi, Romania, polixenianistor@yahoo.com Abstract: The transition from charitable to professional assisting activities is correlated with the need for complex social services, that allow the person to change their lifestyle, if it is self-vulnerable (Cojocaru, 2002). The services offered to the beneficiaries should not only aim at ensuring material comfort, but at significantly increasing the quality of the beneficiary's life, their very happiness, expressed as subjective quality of life.


Introduction
This paper is a foray into the process of forming social assistance as a distinct social practice and a distinct profession among the assistant professions, along with the professions of psychologists, psychopedagogists, school mediators and community mediators, as well as a nurse etc. It is noteworthy that "a person is or becomes a beneficiary of social assistance services not only because of social or economic circumstances, as it is often said, but also because their personality is or is structured sociodysfunctional, and an essential role In this process is the lack of satisfaction or the inadequate satisfaction of the need for happiness, for a positive mental state, for reward, for ego feeding, for self-esteem. It is in vain to only intervene with economic measures in the system of the individual beneficiary, if the problem is actually psychological or has an important psychological component" (Ştefăroi, 2009: 55). The social protection of the individual and of the group (Sandu, 2013) should aim not only at financial support -the benefits -granted to vulnerable persons and groups, but most of all at supporting prevention against the vulnerability becoming permanent, to "adjust their socio-economic status, as well as to diminish and eliminate this phenomenon of precarious human existence, in order to promote well-being" (Vulcu, 1997: 60).

Social assistance as a manifestation of caring for the other
Care for people in need has been a preoccupation of society even since ancient times, when humanity had a choice between the spartan model of killing children born with malformations and considered unfit of joining the Spartan society of the time (Gheorghe, 2013: 10) and that of the people of Israel, which tried to mobilize the community in support of widowed women and orphaned children. Testimonies have been kept about "the care of Aztec civilization for orphans and people with disabilities. The Hindu civilization protected vulnerable and needy groups. During the Christian emperor Constantine the Great, the first social assistance institutions were created for abandoned children and young people, widowed women, elderly and poor people" (Vrăsmaş, 2009: 14). Starting from here, Doru Buzducea states that as a "science and a profession, social assistance has modern origins, but as a helping activity for the poor, it has a long history, being associated with the idea of charity and philanthropy, attested by various ancient religious documents and writings. Virtually, all the civilizations of the world have been involved in helping others, and some of them even had real The community act of charity -even since the middle of the first century -acquires a religious character, as it was practiced at the level of local churches in the various provinces of the Roman Empire, supported by the Apostles, by the bishops and ministers of the respective Churches. We are dealing with a kind of replacement of what was called the Roman peace (pax romana) with what was called the Christian peace (pax christiana), which in itself embraced the charitable aspect as well, a novelty for the world at that time, which had a great impact on the needy people, and a correspondence system supported this new way of interrelation among men, which Apostle Paul also speaks of.

Charity in the early Christian centuries
The feeling of care towards the other, as a fulfillment of the self, represents a revolutionary return to Christ's morality. The voice of compassion translates to the professional ethicist of the twentieth century the evangelical teaching, as Jesus said, that He desires mercy and not sacrifice. We can understand the sacrifice that Jesus Christ speaks about as being exactly the paradigm of righteousness, which makes people in need of care vulnerable. Caring is, spiritually, both mercy and sacrifice .
Since the fourth century, charitable activity has been institutionalized inside the Christian Church. In this sense, "Since the early centuries of Christianity, the Church has put into practice the gospel of Christ's merciful love for the sick, and since the fourth century has been responsible for the establishment of many infirmaries, pharmacies and hospitals. The Church's servants, understanding the gospel of the mercy of Christ, have always urged people, by word and deed, to care for the sick and to help them according to their own strength" (IPS Daniel, 2013: 130).
St. Basil the Great is considered to be the father of Christian philanthropy. In his capacity as bishop, Basil the Great founded the first hospitals for sick people suffering from contagious diseases, as well as hostels for poor people, travelers and foreigners (Petcu, 2009: 2). Thus, "the practical work of the early Christians consisted in caring for abandoned sick people, orphans and slaves. Gradually, the first monk orders appeared, which also dealt with the care and treatment of orphans, widows, convicts and persecuted people" (Olah, Ondrusova, Bozic, & Palun, 2011: 12).
The development of philanthropic activity was the first form of social redistribution of wealth. In order for this redistribution to take place, the members of the wealthy social classes had to be convinced of the social importance of this activity. This role was given to the Church, as a guardian of social trust, but also as a depository of religious truth. The act of charity could be motivated by feelings of Christian love, but most often by fear of Divine punishment, which is why charity was a form of penance, so the Church had to assume the role of intermediate for the act of charity, a mediator between the penitent and the persons that needed help. The wealthy person could be more willing to donate to the Church than directly to the one in need, because this induced the feeling that the Church was actually mediating their instrumental relationship with Divinity, which in return for their donations accepts to offer forgiveness for their own sins or for the sins of the ones close to them, sometimes deceased, especially those sins who them themselves could hardly forgive, but also material help and prosperity. This psychological mechanism still works, the feeling of exchange with God motivating the charitable activity of so-called philanthropists.
The mediation between the charitable resource providers and their beneficiaries put the Church in the position of developing a series of services in line with the specifics of different historical times, and this became the first form of charitable institutionalization. This psychological mechanism, based on the management of insecurity through charity, is not the only one that explains the increased appetite for philanthropic activities of people with a high degree of religiosity. The feelings of love for the Other, inspired by Christian faith, over time determined and still determines some Christians to engage in philanthropic activities as a form of serving the Other. The religious sentiments involved in many cases make believers willing to practice charity for the Other to also address the Church, the cult institutions as intermediaries between them and the person in need, whether they believe that the Church has the capacity to better understand the situation of community members and the real need for help, or simply because the charity act is considered a kind of alms and must be integrated, through sanctification, in a wider ritual context.

The role of the state in the development of philanthropic and assisting activities
In parallel with the philanthropic activity of the Church, the state sometimes assumed an active role in the social protection of the various categories of vulnerable persons. In Rome, in AD 96-117, "the provision of food for poor and orphaned children went to the state's care" (Mănoiu & Epureanu, 1997). "Kings Nerva and Trajan set up the so-called food fund, from which the peasants could borrow, and the state used the interest on the loan to finance poor children and orphans" (Olah et al., 2011: 14). The first institutions for the purpose of social assistance were for children and for those without support, being established during the reign of Emperor Constantine the Great, after the establishment of Christianity as a state religion in the Roman Empire (Bocancea, 2003: 121;Bocancea & Neamţu, 1999: 58;Mănoiu & Epureanu, 1994: 2).
Another possible explanation for the involvement of the Church, especially the Catholic Church, in the social assistance of the poor, widows and orphans is provided by Cristian Bocancea and George Neamţu (1999), who consider that the involvement of the Church in social activity was Church's intention to be regarded as an authority at least equivalent to the political power of the State or of the rozal rulers. The rivalry between the Church and the State in helping the needy was settled relatively quickly, therefore starting with the year 1000, the task of helping the needy in Western European countries remained almost exclusively on the Church's agenda, until the nineteenth century, when modern states began to also develop social assistance activities, sporadically and non-systematically, and then more and more specific, reaching the stage of the professionalization of social assistance and later, in certain law systems, even excluding the social activity of the faith-based organizations from the list of activities financed by to the state.
In the 1100s, the Catholic Church issued a decree stipulating the obligation of the rich to help the poor. Through this decree, the Catholic Church officially assumed the role of mediator in the social redistribution of wealth, at the level and in the forms available at that time, becoming what we call today a policy maker for the social policies of the time.

Historical perspectives on charity professionalization
However, some regulations of a social nature have been adopted since the Middle Ages. This is the case of the law against begging enacted in England in 1349, which governed the categories of persons who had the right to beg, such as the elderly, the disabled and those without work, and also those who were denied this right, meaning the persons who could work, who were harshly punished if they carried out begging activities. A certificate was then introduced stating that a person had the right to beg (Bocancea & Neamţu, 1999;Mănoiu & Epureanu, 1997).
Elena Zamfir also appreciated that "social assistance has its origins in targeted, unsystematic attempts of religious institutions to help people in need through charity [...]. This law is in fact the first form of institutionalized social assistance " (Zamfir, 2002: 119). The Elisabethan Poor Law (1601)distinguishes for the first time the sources of social assistance funding from landowners' fees. From the taxes paid by landowners, funds were gathered to help the disadvantaged: the elderly, the sick, the poor, the disabled " (Zamfir, 1995(Zamfir, : 62, 2012. The responsibility to assist the people in need (Frunză, 2011), defined at the time using the generic term of ,,the poor", is transferred to the community, which could also establish care institutions, transforming individual charity into a public service (Zastrow, 2014) transforming what was until then only charitable activity into an institutionalized activity (Vlăduţescu & Teodorescu, 2014). Separating the poor into categories, of those who that can not work and are therefore entitled to social assistancewhich replaces the right to beg from the previous legislation -and those who can work but do not want to, and are therefore not entitled to benefit from help from the community, on the one hand opened up the road to discriminating all persons in need, even if they did not meet the criteria of the Elisabethan law as non-eligible persons for begging (Szucs, 2014). On the other hand, under the effect of this law began the process of institutionalizing care for people in need and of transforming social assistance into a profession dedicated to helping people in need (Sandu & Unguru, 2013).
A number of social assistance institutions emerging after the enactment of the Elizabethan Law, called workshops, in which they allowed representatives of the various disadvantaged categories, including sick people with disabilities , former offenders etc. to perform various chores, for symbolic rewards including accommodation and meals, implemented the principle of rehabilitation through work, as people were considered responsible for the disadvantaged social condition they were in (Bocancea & Neamţu, 1999). Living and working conditions were harsh, as people in poverty were not encouraged to seek care in such settings (Green, 2010). This model is the foundation of social policies based on the principle of subsidiarity, which implies that the offering of help is conditioned by the proven incapacity of the individual, their family or social group to be selfsufficient. The principle of subsidiarity invokes the responsibility of the individual as a social actor over his own social condition, which comes before the responsibility of the community and, ultimately, society in general. Social assistance as a form of compensation for moral bad luck  meets the need for social security, but limited to the extens where the individual assumes responsibility for their own social condition and accepts support and social assistance as a form of social therapeutics. The other paradigm, the welfairist one, implies the general responsibility of the society, represented by the state, for insuring minimal welfare conditions for all members of society, even if they do not feel responsible or do not want to act to improve their own social condition. At the level of public policies, this paradigm is based on the mandatory solidarity of the members of society, on social assistance generally based on benefits given by the state of origin, and less on organized social services. Of course, in practice, the social policies resulting from the two paradigms of social-political thinking coexist, the measures adopted being usually mixed.
In rural areas, at first in Britain and then expanded to the US and Western Europe, the consequences of Queen Elisabeth's law on the poor were the shift of responsibility for disadvantaged people and community responsibility to care, expressed through churches, as intermediaries and offerer of charity services (Bocancea, 2003: 123). In order to discourage the needy people from migrating in search of parishes that provide better care, in 1662 the law called the Law of Settlement and Removal was adopted, which provided the condition of a permanent residence in order to get aid, a law that led to the appearance of other laws, that were no longer motivated by helping the poor, and which led to what in the Roman Principalities, but also in the rest of Central and Eastern Europe, was known as the bondage of the serfs.
In 1782, the law called Gilbert`s Act imposed the obligation for the parishes to reunite in trade unions in order to organize the maintenance of "poor houses that provided care to the elderly, sick and disabled. Poor people who could work were expressly excluded from these poor homes, but instead they were provided with jobs near their homes [...] where they could receive an indemnity from the parishes taxes, so they could earn salaries up to the level of subsistence " (Bloy, 2016). This new regulation brings back the role of churches in helping those in need. The Speenhamland system, introduced in 1792, provided for state compensation for the income of people below the poverty threshold, without measures being taken to institutionalize the poor and without hindering their free movement. The model is found today in the social benefits system, where individuals and families whose earnings are below a minimum threshold are entitled to receive them as the guaranteed minimum income. The model of deinstitutionalisation of care for those in need by financial compensation is a number of steps forward in respecting the dignity of beneficiaries, but starts from the assumption that social needs are resolved by financial aid, which is not always true, because vulnerabilities which beneficiaries suffer may be diverse, including cognitive, axiological etc. (Cojocaru, 2002).

Modernity and poverty. Social exclusion of vulnerable populations
The modern age begins with massive migratory waves from the villages to the cities and with the beginnings of specific capitalist production relations, that bring along generalized poverty, poverty becoming a constant of social life, while the need for social assistance is experienced by wider population categories , unable to be self-sufficient (Preda, 2003). Poverty becomes a social threat, and the rich classes begin to scornfully look down at the poor and refuse any form of help for them (Bocancea & Neamţu, 1999). The Lutheran reform, by introduction labor ethics and temperance, reinforces the reluctance of the poor social groups, unable to provide for their necessities through labor. Protestant ethics turns poverty almost into a moral flaw and rejects the idea of mercy towards the poor as a means of personal salvation for the philanthropist (Tangelder, 2007).
At the early start of capitalism, the poor populations were divided into two categories, as they voluntarily accept or refuse social assistance received in the form of charity. Those who did not voluntarily accept the imposed social order represented a category of unabiding and threatening poor people (Bocancea & Neamţu, 2009), which eventually constituted the mass of individuals maneuvered during of the great revolutionary movements of the 18th century, that culminated with the French Revolution, but also with revolutionary movements throughout Europe, and later in the twentieth century with the first communist movements. Communism, acting on behalf of the poor groups, was intended to be a solution to the social inequalities of the time, but eventually it turned out to be a deeply anti-humanist movement, that generated totalitarian regimes particularly dangerous.
The reluctant attitudes manifested during the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century led to revolutionary movements that separated the state from the Church, from the ideal of the secular society. Of course, responsibility for discriminated people and disadvantaged groups has remained a problem of the state. States, partly from the different understanding of the value of human dignity after the Second World War, partly because of the generalization of Soviet-type socialism, which many young people of the 1950s or 1960s regarded as a solution to the social crisis of those times, put into practice a series of social assistance policies for the December, 2018 Medical Humanities and Bioethics Volume 2, Issue 2 24 development of the welfare state, also called the State of Assistance, or the state of generalized welfare (Poede, 2002). The secularization of social life led to the apparent diminish of the social role of the Church, but the Church was permanently present in the middle of the great social movements of the 20th century, either as a bastion of anticommunist resistance in the countries of Eastern Europe or as a catalyst for the development of moral and social issues in Western Europe, Latin America and elsewhere in the world. The social role of the Church was far from complete, a proof being that in the 20th century a socialist doctrine was developed within the Catholic Church (Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, 2007).
The 21st century brought recognition to the role of the Church in society and the fact that the separation of the state from religion can not be done with the exclusion of religious people from society, and that secularization must not go, in the name of political correctness, to the exclusion from public life of Christians. Thus, important thinkers like Jurgen Habermas speak of the post-secular society, which recognizes not only the role of religious belief in society, but also the fact that society, made up of individuals who -many -adhere to religious values, includes among its values a series of fundamental Christian values such as human dignity, tolerance, understanding, dialogue and mutual respect (Habermas, 2008).

The onset of professional social assistance. From charity to social assistance
In 1869, the first social welfare institution in London, called the Charity Organization Societies (COS), was set up to coordinate the gathering and sharing of funds for the needy, working with volunteers called friendly visitors. The COS volunteers have realized that in order to determine what beneficiaries are most in need and how they should receive help, information about the level of income and the social situation of the individual and their family is not enough, but a series of interactions of a social nature and their impact on the individual and the family or groups of belonging should be taken into account . Thus, the first instruments for social assistance, social investigation, case study and social casework, were born.
The expansion of Charity Organization Societies in the United States occurs when community homes are opened, the most well known being Hull House, coordinated by the Barnett's, Jane Addams, Ellen Gates Starr, which combines social work with research in the field of social assistance which was carried out by sociologists such as Arnol Toynbee (Hamington, 2018). Mary E. Richmond transforms the ideology of the Charity Organization Societies (COS) movement, whose coordinator she was in Baltimore, considering that the organization's purpose is not the distribution of aid, but mediation between people who can provide resources or help and those who actually are in need for that help. Practically, faith-based organizations take over the traditional role of the Church as mediator in the redistribution of resources in the community, between those who can provide and those who seek help. Mary Richmond is the one who introduces professional practice in social work, focusing on social casework and collecting and evaluating social data.
To Mary Richmond we also owe the emergence of the first school of social assistance, called the New York School of Philanthropy, later called Columbia University School of Social Work, where Richmond conducted teaching and research activities during the period 1910-1922 (Mănoiu & Epureanu, 1997;NASH, n.d.). In 1917, Mary Richmond published the first social-research-based book, entitled "Social Diagnosis". "With her extensive knowledge on how to collect information, interviewing methodologies, establishing contacts and conducting conversations, Richmond has given a strong professional status to social casework" (Steyaert, n.d.).

Philanthropy in the Romanian Principalities
In the Romanian Principalities, the first charitable actions appeared even since the Middle Ages and are coordinated by the Church, thus having a strong religious character. The social activities carried out by the Church in the Middle Ages aimed at occasionally helping discriminated people, usually elderly, sick, poor families, orphaned children etc. The aid was based on solidarity, being generally carried out in monasteries (Ţugui & Ţigmeanu, 2010: 9-10) or by the care of the great boyars or rulers. The law for the monasteries provided the hospitality obligation of the monks for the poor and to care for the sick (Livadă-Cadeschi, 2001: 105). Paisie Velicicovsky introduces as an obligation to the monks' to care for the poor and the sick with goodwill, exercising mercy as a Christian virtue (Vicovan, 2014: 205). During the same period, a sick house also functioned at the Golia Monastery in Iaşi.
In Wallachia, Neagoe Basarab builds in 1508 a sick house under the patronage of the Holy Apostles at the Bistriţa Monastery. Constantin Brâncoveanu is the founder of the Hurezi monastery in 1696. The rulers endow the Monasteries with earth, vineyards, forests and mills, so that the so-called sick houses can function from the income obtained (Ţugui & Ţigmeanu, 2010: 9-10).
It is known that some rulers manifested specific care for the correctness of the selection of those who received help in such houses supervised by the ruler's administration, as was the case of Vlad Ţepeş, who burnt from the ground a sick house that cared for false disabled people (Vrăsmaş, 2007: 17).
The first hospital for disabled patients was founded in Suceava in 1619 by Metropolitan Anastasie Crimca, supported by the revenues of the Dragomirna Monastery and the donations of the Metropolitan and the believers (Păcurariu, 1993: 201). The public social assistance system appears in the Romanian Principalities in the 19th century, after the enactment of the Organic Regulations, and private initiative in the field of social assistance appeared in Romania in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. At the beginning of the 20th century, social assistance in Romania was developed at a level similar to that in other European countries and US states, and the first social assistance school -"Princess Ileana" Social School in Bucharest -was established, shortly after, In 1920, the first social welfare department had appeared within the Ministry of Labor, Health and Social Welfare (Lambru, 2002: 61). The Social Service Act of 1930 laid the foundations for a territorial network of community social services, both in towns and villages (Vramas, 2007: 18). After the first census of the social assistance institutions was made, which was also a national diagnosis of social problems, in 1936 it was found that in Romania there were 50 public social assistance units and 471 associations that functioned within the Church " (Zamfir, 2000: 528).
Unfortunately, the communist period interrupted the tradition of Romanian social assistance, first by closing down the social assistance schools, and then effectively abolishing the profession, because it was considered that in the socialist society there are no people in need of social assistance, the state offering to everyone everything that was necessary to live. Social welfare at the level of religious units was also forbidden, the priests and monks not being allowed to organize other forms of charitable actions than those strictly related to the worship activity itself.
After the 1989 Revolution, social assistance in Romania is reopened, both as a social practice and as a field of academic study. Law no. 705/2001 on the National System of Social Assistance, modified and completed by Law no. 292/2011, defines the national system of social assistance, which "represents the set of institutions, measures and actions by which the state, represented by the central and local public administration authorities, as well as the civil society, intervenes for preventing, limiting or removing the temporary or permanent effects of situations that can lead to marginalization or social exclusion of the person, family, groups or communities " (Tomiţă, Baciu, & Lazăr, 2012: 65).
The Orthodox Church and similar Christian churches, such as the Catholic and the Reformed, have set up their own social assistance units, as well as their own Faculties of Theology and Social Assistance, designed to prepare social workers within their respective Churches or the social communities where the Church operates.

Conclusions
The issue of vulnerable people and groups has been a concern of great religious reformers of all time and culture, compassion and mercy being sacred values in most of the great religions of the world, whether they are Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity or Islam. The history of social assistance, as we know it today, would be incomplete without reference to the Christian Church and the biblical teaching. It is possible to highlight a series of moments that have marked the shift from more or less occasional charity acts, carried out by religious institutions or wealthy people under the Christian philanthropic impulse, to complex professional activities based on their own intervention methodology.
The transition from charitable to assisting activities is correlated with the need for complex social services, in order to allow the person to change their lifestyle if they are self-vulnerable (Cojocaru, 2002). The services offered to the beneficiaries should not only aim at ensuring material comfort, but also to a significant increase in the quality of the beneficiary's life, meaning the very happiness of the beneficiary, expressed as the subjective quality of life.