There are hundreds of students in the St. Louis area studying to be social workers.

There are college courses to train them to work with struggling families and individuals. But getting newbies to understand the problems they will one day find behind the closed doors of somebody's home is always a challenge, said Patricia Rosenthal of the University of Missouri St. Louis School of Social Work.

Enter the United Way of Greater St. Louis. Two years ago, the organization was facing its own challenges with its 100 Neediest Cases holiday giving campaign. For every one of the 100 people or families that the Post-Dispatch profiled to encourage charitable donations, there were 930 other cases that had not been selected for a write-up.

The circumstances of these cases were often just as severe, said Vanessa Wayne, the United Way executive in charge of the campaign.

Most were behind on their utility bills, Wayne said. Some coped with physical disabilities or mental illnesses that made it hard to work. Others had lost their jobs or their homes. Some could not afford critical medicine for themselves or their children.

For years, the 100 Neediest campaign has distributed donations to thousands of families who were not profiled in the newspaper. Last year, the campaign raised $1.6 million and benefitted 12,000 families.

But Wayne said there were always troubling questions about this process: Were they allocating this money properly to give their clients maximum relief? Should they split it equally? Or should they try to figure out who needed more? Were they being fair?

Although Wayne had volunteers helping in those decisions, she wasn't sure if they were effective.

"Spending money is easy, but spending money effectively is hard," Wayne said.

That's when Wayne had her light bulb moment. She thought, why not make this difficult process a real-world teaching moment for social workers in training?

So, three years ago Wayne partnered 100 Neediest Cases with the school of social work at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Now, under the guidance of Rosenthal and fellow instructor Uma Segal, it's up to students in three classes to study the cases and devise their own rationales for allocating donations to the 100 Neediest campaign.

Wayne said, it's the ultimate reality check for many students.

"I said to them, these are real stories and they are real people and you're making real decisions, and so understand that the decisions you're making will impact someone's life," she said.

Collectively, the undergraduate and graduate students will decide how to allocate $848,000 in donations to more than 9,000 families - the bulk of the cases included in the 100 Neediest campaign.

Each of the 53 students is responsible for determining how to use the best practices of social work to split up $16,000 among 175 of those cases.

Their work will culminate in early December when each student types in the cash amount they've determined for each case into the Neediest Cases final database. Then they will turn in a final paper explaining their reasoning.

Rosenthal said it's a classic way to get students to understand the unfortunate reality of limited resources in the human services field.

"At first $16,000 seems like a lot," she said.

But the students quickly realize that's not the case. Splitting the money evenly - a solution Rosenthal does not encourage - amounts to $91 per case. This might significantly help an elderly couple, but provide only fleeting relief for a large family.

"We encourage them to try and prioritize level of need," Rosenthal said.

Keshia Smith, a senior at UMSL, said the exercise made a strong impression.

"I didn't know the need was so big," she said. "I was actually assuming the need was with people with lots of kids, but sometimes it was just a single person or elderly cases."

Smith was also surprised by the overlapping needs in so many cases. It wasn't just that a single mother was trying to make it with five kids, but she was also coping with a child with a disability and a job loss, she said.

Smith ultimately decided to give more money to families with limited resources who were isolated from people who could help.

Rosenthal stressed there are no strict formulas - just research and training to help the students see each case in a way that puts reasoning above emotions.

"Obviously we don't want our students to not be touched," Rosenthal said. "But we want them to be aware of what their emotional triggers are and manage them so they are dealing with each case fairly."

Laura McElligott, a senior at UMSL, said keeping her emotions out of it was hard, especially when the needy were military veterans who had served the country. She also had a hard time with families with children, because she felt all kids deserved some special presents at Christmas. Though she couldn't give as much as she wanted, she was resolved that she had done the right thing.

"A little bit is better than nothing," she said.

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