Issues in social welfare

Social Work

The Beginnings of Social Work as a Profession: From the late 19th century to the Early 20th century

The Field of social work has developed on two models of service, social activism and casework. Trace the development of these models. Compare and contrast their goals and methods of practice. What impact has this dual model system had on the development of Social Work as a profession? Select a historical period when one model was the predominant practice method and discuss how the economic, philosophical and governmental variables effect the emergence of that practice model.

Social work aims to treat the individual in the context of society. In other words, the field of social recognizes that all people and all 'cases' are different, and require individualized attention in the form of family, psychological and vocational counseling. However, the field of social work also acknowledges that societal ills can cause the individual problems the caseworker is striving to treat. Thus, the field of social work has evolved, not in a linear fashion, but in kind of a dialogue between the individualistic or psychological or moral model and the socially aware, collective 'activist' model. Over the course of the 19th century, and into the beginning of the 20th century, an increasing awareness of social problems combined with the rise of social activist movements in America created a more political and less individualistic method of treating social problems.

The field of social work began in America during the Civil war. The charitable efforts of Clara Barton during the American Civil War cumulated in the formation of the American Red Cross, and the beginnings of the nursing profession, a profession designed to give aid and trained care according to a professional creed of morals. Dorthea Day shocked by the sights of poverty and immorality in the world around her created Hull House in 1889. (Foster, 1996) These women worked as a part of private charities for their country's social good. The mission of women such as Barton and Day has been an "urban missionary movement...a very sectarian" form of reaching the poor. (Huff, Social Work, 2000, Chapter 1, p.2) This early ideal of social work was what was called the "friendly visitor," philosophy. In this ideal, a Protestant women who represented conservative economics of thrift and Social Darwinism softened by a missionary creed Christian love, and good intentions, would go into urban environments and aid the poor with clothing, better housing, and food, but often only if the poor were willing to reform their intemperate or immoral ways. As Darwin grew increasingly popular in the common intellectual currency of the land, however, these women were encouraged not just to be Christian but to seek to follow "scientific principles as they were then understood," to "study and investigate relief applications, separate the recipients into deserving or undeserving classes and then treat them by making referrals and providing them with friendship." (Huff, Social Work, 2000, Chapter 1, p.4)

The idea of the deserving and undeserving poor, however, showed that despite the zeal of some organizers such as Day, who critiqued city laws and housing policy, there was a strong element of individualistic moral judgment in these early 'cases' studied by 'friendly visitors.' The personal, moral psychology of the poor was seen partially to blame in the impoverished individual's plight, although the idea of deserving poor people suggested, if not explicitly acknowledged, that the poor could suffer from want for reasons beyond their personal control. During the 19th century, the right emphasis on public causes of poverty vs. private causes such as drunkenness was a constant debate between different ideological social organizations. Social activism combined with social welfare of private organizations, from the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and the Temperance Movement, brought politics increasingly into the debate of the causes of poverty, and how to treat poverty -- as a personal failure of the will or society?

This debate grew increasingly heated as immigration, accompanied by rapid urbanization and industrialization increased city social problems at a rapid rate. Urban poverty and its accompanying difficulties forced older established charities to expand their relief services. New charities, both public and private, responded to the challenge as best they could, although often these efforts were still full of judgment about the lives of immigrant laborers and tenement dwellers whom the early social workers or volunteer 'friendly visitors' ill understood. (Huff, Social Work, 2000, Chapter 1, p.3)

Private efforts were not enough to treat the ills caused by the unchecked capitalism of the Gilded Age, however, an age that brought tremendous wealth to some Americans and tremendous poverty to others. During the first depression occasioned by this split between the haves and the have-nots in 1890, private relief organizations could not cope. "In Mulberry Bend, the heart of the Italian district, one-third of all babies born in 1888 died before their first birthdays. Traditional agencies such as the Children's Aid Society and the Salvation Army were overwhelmed, incapable of meeting the demands placed on their services." (Huff, Social Work, 2000, Chapter 1, p.4) "The old shibboleths commonly accepted as the major causes of poverty, low character, indolence, and intemperance, were replaced with more systemic theories," that sought economic and social causes as the cure, rather than moral reform. (Huff, Social Work, 2000, Chapter 1, p.6)

During this time, Jacob Riis, the urban photographer, shook the consciousness of middle-class New Yorkers as he showed a photograph of a destitute Jewish man, celebrating the Sabbath in a filthy tenement. Despite his poverty, the man still lit candles and cut challah bread, his only meal for the day. This photograph summed up the 'scientific' studies of poverty that sought to understand why poverty occurred, rather than merely detail the dirty or immoral conditions in which poor dwelt. For example, one such study conducted in the city of New York found that "only ten percent of the city's poverty was caused by shiftlessness and intemperance. The most substantial causes were found to be unemployment, sickness and industrial accidents. In 1896, Josephine Shaw Lowell, stalwart leader of the COS movement and previously a staunch proponent of traditional charity organization policies said, 'it seems often as if the charities are the insults which the rich add to the injuries they heap upon the poor." (Huff, Social Work, 2000, Chapter 1, p.6)

These sentiments sowed the seeds for the beginnings of a profession of social work, as opposed to volunteer and missionary impulses on a private level. The case study or individualistic model as the sole mode of treating poverty was seen as inadequate and quite simply wrong. In 1915 Abraham Flexner delivered a speech, "Is Social Work a Profession?" At the National Conference on Social Welfare. (Foster, 1996) Social work had to address larger causes than simply individual moral blight, and needed to do so in as trained a fashion as the early social welfare activist and nurse Clara Barton treated the bodies of her wounded patients.