The few people who were lucky enough and plucky enough to escape the horror that Hitlerism and Stalinism brought to this world made great contributions to America. While much of this history has been written for social scientists, the same cannot be said for social workers (Boyers, 1972). I knew some of them.
Continue Reading »On mental retardation legislation, the second major sustained effort of the Kennedy years, Cohen operated as the servant of others. Cohen worked hard on this matter, and that was because Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who was an extraordinarily driven and dedicated woman, wanted him to do so.
Continue Reading »When Wilbur Cohen went from Madison to Washington, D.C. in 1934, he traveled by car and bus. Twenty-seven years later, when he went from another midwestern university town to Washington, he flew. In both cases, he left academia to seek work in a Democratic administration. In both cases, he helped first to create and then to gain Congressional approval for a broad range of social welfare programs.
Continue Reading »It is one of the ironies of social welfare history that Jane Addams died in 1935, the same year that the Social Security Act was passed. It is tempting to see that year as an important watershed.
Continue Reading »We tend to think of the expansion of social security as something impersonal and bureaucratic. It is almost as if the program expanded by itself. The basic old-age insurance program never posed issues that defined the political or cultural character of an era. Yet we know that the process of social security’s growth was neither smooth nor straight forward.
Continue Reading »Wilbur Cohen bounded off the plane and down the jet way at Logan Airport. Unlike the other passengers, who were somewhat tentative as they faced the uncertainties of a new city, he did not measure his step. He walked, with determined energy, straight ahead.
Continue Reading »Having recently completed work on a documentary history of the Social Security program1, several insights suggest themselves which might be useful in framing the (inevitable) future debates over Social Security policy. The first and most salient realization is that to a remarkable degree the policy debates in Social Security seem to contain some hardy perennials.
Continue Reading »Ball started his career in the Social Security field in 1939 and he labored on issues related to Social Security without stint for the next 69 years, working up until two weeks before his death at age 93.
Continue Reading »The people who staffed the Charity Organization Society made major contributions to the growth of social casework. It was not a development they eagerly embraced. Their goal was to provide material relief after a thorough investigation of who was or was not entitled to help. They gradually found that confirming need and certifying moral worth did not achieve the rehabilitation results they desired.
Continue Reading »Since its inception social work has struggled with the questions of the extent to which it should use and it could have confidence in basing practice on knowledge derived from the social and biological sciences. The Scientific Basis of Social Work is a volume that gives an emphatic yes to this query
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