Skip to main content

Tentative Observations On Basic Training

While the committee agreed on the foregoing, it was observed that a characteristic of family case work, whether United Hebrew Charities, Charity Organization Society, or International Migration Service, was that the family was the unit around which the action centered; in Childrens’ or Travelers’ Aid work, on the other hand, the child or the traveler was, generally speaking, the center of work, and the environment was adjusted to the central figure, or vice versa. This is even more true, perhaps, in hospital or psychiatric case work. In this type of agency the patient would be apt to be the center of the case work adjustment, while the family case worker has generally two or more foci in his circle.

Continue Reading »

What Price Slum Clearance? (1953)

Background Memorandum New York State Committee On Discrimination In Housing, 1953. “The City of New York has approved plans for the displacement of at least 45,000 families within the next three years as a result of urban redevelopment, public housing projects and other public improvements such as schools, roads and port authority projects…The elimination of slums and the creation of healthy neighborhoods are necessary and worthy objectives. In the process, however, the city has certain responsibilities and obligations to the displaced families as well as the city as a whole, to see to it that social benefit for one section of the population does not result in severe hardship for others.”

Continue Reading »

Farmville Protests of 1963

Written by Kate Agnelli, MSW. “One of the most well-known Supreme Court decisions in U.S. history, Brown v. Board of Education declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. One of the provisions of the decision was that public schools in the United States were to integrate ‘with all deliberate speed,’ but in many places, local and state governments resisted for months and years.”

Continue Reading »

What is Social Group Work?

The group-work process. — Group work may be defined as an educational process emphasizing (1) the development and social adjustment of an individual through voluntary group association; and (2) the use of this association as a means of furthering other socially desirable ends. It is concerned therefore with both individual growth and social results. Moreover, it is the combined and consistent pursuit of both these objectives, not merely one of them, that distinguishes group work as a process. But what do we mean by a process?

Continue Reading »

Eileen Blackey: Pathfinder for the Profession

In Blackey’s view a school of social work had many constituencies—the university, the profession, the communities and clients served, cooperating agencies, and the general public. With all of them Blackey urged the maintenance of meaningful ties and a leadership role that in large measure remains elusive. She hoped that schools of social work would have a stronger presence within their universities; she envisaged greater involvement of the schools in formulating social policy and advocacy on behalf of vulnerable groups in society; and she wanted agencies to be more open to experimental approaches to practice. These are goals still to be achieved.

Continue Reading »

Training The Rural Relief Worker On The Job (1935)

The rural social worker is confronted with a real dilemma in knowing how much of a family’s welfare is her responsibility. It is not unusual to find that man’y of our rural areas have been untouched by social working organizations, or, for that matter, by few if any community organizations. The rural worker is called on to provide for the health needs of the families in many instances where there is inadequate medical and nursing service. School attendance becomes her concern where the state laws are static in their effectiveness. She finds mental problems of long standing, or disturbances of an acute nature, in her families, and since she is the only representative of an agency in the area, securing treatment or institutionalization becomes part of her service to the family. Whether she is equipped for it or not, emergencies arise where the worker participates in removing children from the home, in institutional placement of delinquents, feeble-minded, or handicapped members of the family.

Continue Reading »

Nurses In “Settlement” Work (1895)

Presentation by Lillian D. Wald at the Twenty-Second Annual Session of the National Conference Of Charities And Correction, 1895. “The actual nursing in the tenements, the lending of sick-room utensils and bedding, and the making of delicacies and carrying of flowers have not been different from the usual methods of district nursing.”

Continue Reading »

Removal of Children From Almshouses (1894)

Presentation by Homer Folks, Chairman, Secretary of the State Charities Aid Association of New York. This entry is one of three presentations by distinguished leaders of the era at the 1894 Annual Meeting of the National Conference on Social Welfare in a section of the meeting on “Child-Saving.” Together, the three entries describe the institutions, deplorable conditions and efforts to reform and improve the care of vulnerable children.

Continue Reading »

Removal of Children From Almshouses in The State of New York (1894)

Presentation by the Hon. Wm. P. Letchworth, Member of the State Board of Charities Of New York. This entry is one of three presentations by distinguished leaders of the era at the 1894 Annual Meeting of the National Conference on Social Welfare in a section of the meeting on “Child-Saving.” Together, the three entries describe the institutions, deplorable conditions and efforts to reform and improve the care of vulnerable children.

Continue Reading »