History of social work
Encyclopedia
Social work has its roots in the struggle of society
to deal with poverty and the problems associated with it. Therefore, social work is intricately linked with the idea of charity
work; but must be understood in broader terms. The concept of charity goes back to ancient times, and the practice of providing for the poor has roots in all major world religions
.
legalized the Christian Church
, the newly legitimised church set up poorhouse
s, homes for the aged, hospitals, and orphanage
s. These were often funded, at least in part, from grants from the Empire.
By 590 AD the church had a system for circulating the consumables to the poor: associated with each parish
was a diaconium or office of the deacon
.
As there was no effective bureaucracy below city government that was capable of charitable activities, the clergy served this role in the west up through the 18th century.
During the Middle Ages
, the Christian church had vast influence on European society and charity was considered to be a responsibility and a sign of one’s piety. This charity was in the form of direct relief (for example, giving money, food, or other material goods to alleviate a particular need), as opposed to trying to change the root causes of poverty.
The practice and profession of social work has a relatively modern (19th century) and scientific origin.
, the poor were seen as a more direct threat to the social order, and so the state formed an organized system to care for them. In England, the Poor Law
served this purpose. This system of laws sorted the poor into different categories, such as the able bodied poor, the impotent poor, and the idle poor. This system developed different responses to these different groups.
The 19th century ushered in the Industrial Revolution
. There was a great leap in technological and scientific achievement, but there was also a great migration
to urban areas throughout the Western world
. This led to many social problems, which in turn led to an increase in social activism. Also with the dawn of the 19th century came a great "missionary
" push from many Protestant denominations. Some of these mission efforts (urban missions), attempted to resolve the problems inherent in large cities like poverty, prostitution, disease, and other afflictions. In the United States workers known as "friendly visitors", stipend
ed by church and other charitable bodies, worked through direct relief, prayer
, and evangelism
to alleviate these problems. In Europe, chaplain
s or almoner
s were appointed to administer the church's mission to the poor.
During this time, rescue societies were initiated to find more appropriate means of self-support for women involved in prostitution. Mental asylums grew to assist in taking care of the mentally ill. A new philosophy of "scientific charity" emerged, which stated charity should be "secular, rational and empirical as opposed to sectarian, sentimental, and dogmatic." In the late 1880s, a new system to provide aid for social ills came in to being, which became known as the settlement movement
. The settlement movement focused on the causes of poverty through the "three Rs" - Research, Reform, and Residence. They provided a variety of services including educational, legal, and health services. These programs also advocated changes in social policy. Workers in the settlement movement immersed themselves in the culture of those they were helping.
In America, the various approaches to social work led to a fundamental question – is social work a profession? This debate can be traced back to the early 20th century debate between Mary Richmond's
Charity Organization Society
(COS) and Jane Addams's
Settlement House Movement
. The essence of this debate was whether the problem should be approached from COS' traditional, scientific method
focused on efficiency and prevention or the Settlement House Movement's immersion into the problem, blurring the lines of practitioner and client.
Even as many schools of social work opened and formalized processes for social work began to be developed, the question lingered. In 1915, at the National Conference of Charities and Corrections, Dr. Abraham Flexner
spoke on the topic "Is Social Work a Profession?" He contended that it was not because it lacked specialized knowledge and specific application of theoretical and intellectual knowledge to solve human and social problems. This led to the professionalization of social work, concentrating on case work and the scientific method.
facilities were built to prevent contamination. As populations grew, Almhouses were built to house vulnerable people with no other support, including people with a long term illness or older people without families. The first recorded Almshouse was built in 1713 near Philadelphia by William Penn, and was only open to Quakers. A second one was built nearby in 1728, this time with public money. In 1736 New York opened the Poor House of the City of New York (later renamed Bellevue Hospital) and in 1737 New Orleans opened the Saint John's Hospital to serve the poor of the city.
Over the next 80 years, the facilities began to change. The precursors to modern hospitals began to form on the grounds of Almshouses, while the Almshouses themselves focused more and more on vulnerable people.
Modern social work in America has its roots in the mass migrations of the 19th century. Many of the migrants landed in New York and moved to other eastern cities, where mass crowding, led to social problems and ill health. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell
was the United States' first female doctor who set up the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children in 1853. The dispensary
was run to assist the poor communities of East Side, and it soon diversified beyond a basic pharmacy, providing social assessments and support to local families. In 1889 Jane Addams
was a young medical student who set up Hull House
in Chicago to work with poor and immigrant communities. The house was both a community service centre and a social research program. Precursors to modern social work arose in Blackwell's infirmary and in Hull House as health professionals began to work with social determinants of poor health.
The first professional social worker to be hired in the United States was Garnet Pelton, in 1905 at the Massachusetts General Hospital
. Garnet retired after six months due to contracting tuberculosis
in the course of her work. She was replaced by Ida Cannon who worked in the role for a further forty years. Dr. Richard Clarke Cabot
was a key advocate in the creation of the role, as he believed there to be a link between tuberculosis and social conditions. Both Pelton and Cannon had trained as nurses before taking up the role. Cabot was in charge of the outpatient ward of the hospital, and together with the newly created social workers, they redefined the way in which health and wellbeing was managed. The economic, social, family and psychological conditions that underpinned many of the conditions that patients presented with were recognised for the first time. Social workers would work in a complementary relationship with doctors, the former concentrating on physiological health, and the latter on social health. In addition to this, he saw that social work could improve medicine by providing a critical perspective on it while working alongside it in an organisational setting.
This approach soon spread through other American hospitals, and in 1911, there were 44 social work departments in 14 different cities. Two years later, the number of social work departments had grown to 200.
. The profession took direction from the established schools in England until the 1960s, when a more American model took hold. Most high level training and theory was imported from abroad until the 1980s. Some Australian social work writers such as Jim Ife has criticised the impact that this has had on Australians being able to develop culturally appropriate theories and practices. Since the 1990s, Australian social work has increasingly affiliated itself with Pacific Islander and New Zealand approaches.
Social Work has been a mostly public sector or not-for-profit sector profession in Australia, with private practice being rare. The profession has experienced changes in two different direction in the last 30 years. One is a pull towards a more managerial, professionalised model, and the other is to a more community based, deprofessionalised approach. Further to this has been the trend by large organisations to replace the "jack of all trades" social work approach with less highly trained, more technical positions. Since the 1990s, other reactions to managerial control of social work have followed theories of feminism, ecological sustainability and critical theories.
was a major cause of these changes, as social and economic conditions changed, resulting in the massive growth of cities. The first social workers were called hospital almoners, and were based in medical institutions. The Royal Free Hospital
hired Mary Stewart
as the first almoner in 1895. Her role was to assess people requesting treatment at the hospital to ensure that they were considered "deserving enough" of the free treatment. The role soon developed to cover the provision of other social programs, and by 1905 other hospitals had created similar roles. By this time, the Hospital Almoners Council had been formed to oversee the new profession.
Society
A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations...
to deal with poverty and the problems associated with it. Therefore, social work is intricately linked with the idea of charity
Charity (virtue)
In Christian theology charity, or love , means an unlimited loving-kindness toward all others.The term should not be confused with the more restricted modern use of the word charity to mean benevolent giving.- Caritas: altruistic love :...
work; but must be understood in broader terms. The concept of charity goes back to ancient times, and the practice of providing for the poor has roots in all major world religions
Major religious groups
The world's principal religions and spiritual traditions may be classified into a small number of major groups, although this is by no means a uniform practice...
.
Pre-Modern history
In the West, when Constantine IConstantine I
Constantine the Great , also known as Constantine I or Saint Constantine, was Roman Emperor from 306 to 337. Well known for being the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity, Constantine and co-Emperor Licinius issued the Edict of Milan in 313, which proclaimed religious tolerance of all...
legalized the Christian Church
Christian Church
The Christian Church is the assembly or association of followers of Jesus Christ. The Greek term ἐκκλησία that in its appearances in the New Testament is usually translated as "church" basically means "assembly"...
, the newly legitimised church set up poorhouse
Poorhouse
A poorhouse or workhouse was a government-run facility in the past for the support and housing of dependent or needy persons, typically run by a local government entity such as a county or municipality....
s, homes for the aged, hospitals, and orphanage
Orphanage
An orphanage is a residential institution devoted to the care of orphans – children whose parents are deceased or otherwise unable or unwilling to care for them...
s. These were often funded, at least in part, from grants from the Empire.
By 590 AD the church had a system for circulating the consumables to the poor: associated with each parish
Parish
A parish is a territorial unit historically under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of one parish priest, who might be assisted in his pastoral duties by a curate or curates - also priests but not the parish priest - from a more or less central parish church with its associated organization...
was a diaconium or office of the deacon
Deacon
Deacon is a ministry in the Christian Church that is generally associated with service of some kind, but which varies among theological and denominational traditions...
.
As there was no effective bureaucracy below city government that was capable of charitable activities, the clergy served this role in the west up through the 18th century.
During the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
, the Christian church had vast influence on European society and charity was considered to be a responsibility and a sign of one’s piety. This charity was in the form of direct relief (for example, giving money, food, or other material goods to alleviate a particular need), as opposed to trying to change the root causes of poverty.
The practice and profession of social work has a relatively modern (19th century) and scientific origin.
Modern history
Social work, as a profession, originated in the 19th century. The movement began primarily in the United States and England. After the end of feudalismFeudalism
Feudalism was a set of legal and military customs in medieval Europe that flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries, which, broadly defined, was a system for ordering society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.Although derived from the...
, the poor were seen as a more direct threat to the social order, and so the state formed an organized system to care for them. In England, the Poor Law
Poor Law
The English Poor Laws were a system of poor relief which existed in England and Wales that developed out of late-medieval and Tudor-era laws before being codified in 1587–98...
served this purpose. This system of laws sorted the poor into different categories, such as the able bodied poor, the impotent poor, and the idle poor. This system developed different responses to these different groups.
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
. There was a great leap in technological and scientific achievement, but there was also a great migration
Urbanization
Urbanization, urbanisation or urban drift is the physical growth of urban areas as a result of global change. The United Nations projected that half of the world's population would live in urban areas at the end of 2008....
to urban areas throughout the Western world
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...
. This led to many social problems, which in turn led to an increase in social activism. Also with the dawn of the 19th century came a great "missionary
Missionary
A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...
" push from many Protestant denominations. Some of these mission efforts (urban missions), attempted to resolve the problems inherent in large cities like poverty, prostitution, disease, and other afflictions. In the United States workers known as "friendly visitors", stipend
Stipend
A stipend is a form of salary, such as for an internship or apprenticeship. It is often distinct from a wage or a salary because it does not necessarily represent payment for work performed, instead it represents a payment that enables somebody to be exempt partly or wholly from waged or salaried...
ed by church and other charitable bodies, worked through direct relief, prayer
Prayer
Prayer is a form of religious practice that seeks to activate a volitional rapport to a deity through deliberate practice. Prayer may be either individual or communal and take place in public or in private. It may involve the use of words or song. When language is used, prayer may take the form of...
, and evangelism
Evangelism
Evangelism refers to the practice of relaying information about a particular set of beliefs to others who do not hold those beliefs. The term is often used in reference to Christianity....
to alleviate these problems. In Europe, chaplain
Chaplain
Traditionally, a chaplain is a minister in a specialized setting such as a priest, pastor, rabbi, or imam or lay representative of a religion attached to a secular institution such as a hospital, prison, military unit, police department, university, or private chapel...
s or almoner
Almoner
An almoner is a chaplain or church officer who originally was in charge of distributing cash to the deserving poor.Historically, almoners were Christian religious functionaries whose duty was to distribute alms to the poor. Monasteries were required to spend one tenth of their income in charity to...
s were appointed to administer the church's mission to the poor.
Settlement movement
The settlement movement was a reformist social movement, beginning in the 1880s and peaking around the 1920s in England and the US, with a goal of getting the rich and poor in society to live more closely together in an interdependent community...
. The settlement movement focused on the causes of poverty through the "three Rs" - Research, Reform, and Residence. They provided a variety of services including educational, legal, and health services. These programs also advocated changes in social policy. Workers in the settlement movement immersed themselves in the culture of those they were helping.
In America, the various approaches to social work led to a fundamental question – is social work a profession? This debate can be traced back to the early 20th century debate between Mary Richmond's
Mary Richmond
Mary Ellen Richmond was an American social work pioneer.-Life:She was born in 1861 in Belleville, Illinois and lived until 1928. Her parents died when Mary was very young, which forced her to live with her grandmother and aunts in Baltimore, Maryland. Her grandmother was an active women's...
Charity Organization Society
Charity Organization Society
The Charity Organization Societies also called the Associated Charities was a private charity that existed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a clearing house for information on the poor. The society was mainly concerned with distinction between the deserving poor and undeserving poor...
(COS) and Jane Addams's
Jane Addams
Jane Addams was a pioneer settlement worker, founder of Hull House in Chicago, public philosopher, sociologist, author, and leader in woman suffrage and world peace...
Settlement House Movement
Settlement movement
The settlement movement was a reformist social movement, beginning in the 1880s and peaking around the 1920s in England and the US, with a goal of getting the rich and poor in society to live more closely together in an interdependent community...
. The essence of this debate was whether the problem should be approached from COS' traditional, scientific method
Scientific method
Scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of...
focused on efficiency and prevention or the Settlement House Movement's immersion into the problem, blurring the lines of practitioner and client.
Even as many schools of social work opened and formalized processes for social work began to be developed, the question lingered. In 1915, at the National Conference of Charities and Corrections, Dr. Abraham Flexner
Abraham Flexner
Abraham Flexner was an American educator. His Flexner Report, published in 1910, reformed medical education in the United States...
spoke on the topic "Is Social Work a Profession?" He contended that it was not because it lacked specialized knowledge and specific application of theoretical and intellectual knowledge to solve human and social problems. This led to the professionalization of social work, concentrating on case work and the scientific method.
American History
Following European settlement of northern America, the only social welfare was in the area of public health. When epidemics occurred, quarantineQuarantine
Quarantine is compulsory isolation, typically to contain the spread of something considered dangerous, often but not always disease. The word comes from the Italian quarantena, meaning forty-day period....
facilities were built to prevent contamination. As populations grew, Almhouses were built to house vulnerable people with no other support, including people with a long term illness or older people without families. The first recorded Almshouse was built in 1713 near Philadelphia by William Penn, and was only open to Quakers. A second one was built nearby in 1728, this time with public money. In 1736 New York opened the Poor House of the City of New York (later renamed Bellevue Hospital) and in 1737 New Orleans opened the Saint John's Hospital to serve the poor of the city.
Over the next 80 years, the facilities began to change. The precursors to modern hospitals began to form on the grounds of Almshouses, while the Almshouses themselves focused more and more on vulnerable people.
Modern social work in America has its roots in the mass migrations of the 19th century. Many of the migrants landed in New York and moved to other eastern cities, where mass crowding, led to social problems and ill health. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell
Elizabeth Blackwell
Elizabeth Blackwell was the first female doctor in the United States and the first on the UK Medical Register...
was the United States' first female doctor who set up the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children in 1853. The dispensary
Dispensary
A dispensary is an office in a school, hospital or other organization that dispenses medications and medical supplies. In a traditional dispensary set-up a pharmacist dispenses medication as per prescription or order form....
was run to assist the poor communities of East Side, and it soon diversified beyond a basic pharmacy, providing social assessments and support to local families. In 1889 Jane Addams
Jane Addams
Jane Addams was a pioneer settlement worker, founder of Hull House in Chicago, public philosopher, sociologist, author, and leader in woman suffrage and world peace...
was a young medical student who set up Hull House
Hull House
Hull House is a settlement house in the United States that was co-founded in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr. Located in the Near West Side of , Hull House opened its doors to the recently arrived European immigrants. By 1911, Hull House had grown to 13 buildings. In 1912 the Hull...
in Chicago to work with poor and immigrant communities. The house was both a community service centre and a social research program. Precursors to modern social work arose in Blackwell's infirmary and in Hull House as health professionals began to work with social determinants of poor health.
The first professional social worker to be hired in the United States was Garnet Pelton, in 1905 at the Massachusetts General Hospital
Massachusetts General Hospital
Massachusetts General Hospital is a teaching hospital and biomedical research facility in the West End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts...
. Garnet retired after six months due to contracting tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
in the course of her work. She was replaced by Ida Cannon who worked in the role for a further forty years. Dr. Richard Clarke Cabot
Richard Clarke Cabot
Richard Clarke Cabot was an American physician who advanced clinical hematology, was an innovator in teaching methods, and was a pioneer in social work.-Family History:...
was a key advocate in the creation of the role, as he believed there to be a link between tuberculosis and social conditions. Both Pelton and Cannon had trained as nurses before taking up the role. Cabot was in charge of the outpatient ward of the hospital, and together with the newly created social workers, they redefined the way in which health and wellbeing was managed. The economic, social, family and psychological conditions that underpinned many of the conditions that patients presented with were recognised for the first time. Social workers would work in a complementary relationship with doctors, the former concentrating on physiological health, and the latter on social health. In addition to this, he saw that social work could improve medicine by providing a critical perspective on it while working alongside it in an organisational setting.
This approach soon spread through other American hospitals, and in 1911, there were 44 social work departments in 14 different cities. Two years later, the number of social work departments had grown to 200.
Professionalisation
After 1905, most social workers were trained as nurses. The American Association of Hospital Social Workers was set up in 1918 to increase the links between formal education and hospital practice. In 1929 there were ten university courses in medical social work. Around this time, psychiatry and psychology began to compete with social work as the complementary discourse to medicine in hospitals. Social work practice adapted to this by aligning itself more closely with psychoanalytic ideas, and became less concerned with living conditions and social health. While this detracted from the social concerns, it added a more scientific basis to dealing with patients, and challenging behaviours were more likely to be seen as a mental disfunction than poor moral character. The increase of social spending after World War Two saw another rise in the number of social workers.Australian History
Social work as a profession in Australia developed later than in England or America, with the first professional social workers being hired in the 1920s. Social work training began in Australia in 1940 at the University of SydneyUniversity of Sydney
The University of Sydney is a public university located in Sydney, New South Wales. The main campus spreads across the suburbs of Camperdown and Darlington on the southwestern outskirts of the Sydney CBD. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and Oceania...
. The profession took direction from the established schools in England until the 1960s, when a more American model took hold. Most high level training and theory was imported from abroad until the 1980s. Some Australian social work writers such as Jim Ife has criticised the impact that this has had on Australians being able to develop culturally appropriate theories and practices. Since the 1990s, Australian social work has increasingly affiliated itself with Pacific Islander and New Zealand approaches.
Social Work has been a mostly public sector or not-for-profit sector profession in Australia, with private practice being rare. The profession has experienced changes in two different direction in the last 30 years. One is a pull towards a more managerial, professionalised model, and the other is to a more community based, deprofessionalised approach. Further to this has been the trend by large organisations to replace the "jack of all trades" social work approach with less highly trained, more technical positions. Since the 1990s, other reactions to managerial control of social work have followed theories of feminism, ecological sustainability and critical theories.
English History
The growth of social work in England as a discipline had similar parallels to the American experience of mass migration and social upheaval. The Industrial RevolutionIndustrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
was a major cause of these changes, as social and economic conditions changed, resulting in the massive growth of cities. The first social workers were called hospital almoners, and were based in medical institutions. The Royal Free Hospital
Royal Free Hospital
The Royal Free Hospital is a major teaching hospital in Hampstead, London, England and part of the Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust....
hired Mary Stewart
Mary Stewart (social worker)
Mary Stewart was the first hospital almoner appointed in the United Kingdom.Little is known of Stewart's family or early life...
as the first almoner in 1895. Her role was to assess people requesting treatment at the hospital to ensure that they were considered "deserving enough" of the free treatment. The role soon developed to cover the provision of other social programs, and by 1905 other hospitals had created similar roles. By this time, the Hospital Almoners Council had been formed to oversee the new profession.