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What Social Work Has To Offer In The Field Of Mental Retardation (1960)

Social work is making a contribution to the field of mental retardation but social workers are not giving the substantial services which are needed and which they have the competence to give. Along with other professions and the general public, social work failed for many years to give focused attention to the mentally retarded as a group in the population which needed their services. Lacking knowledge of ways to help the severely and moderately retarded, the social workers helped parents place their children if that seemed the best solution at that time. Other social services were given, but often they were fragmentary and somewhat isolated. What amounted to neglect rose more from frustration and lack of knowledge than from indifference.

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Weed, Verne

Verne was a social worker whose commitment to human service became the essence of her being, and both the source and focus of her energy. Her life and work were illuminated by a holistic view of social relationships, which links all persons as members in the human family. She considered that solutions to social problems could be achieved through united, collective activity, and that prevention is the most effective approach to social problem solving. Verne Weed understood that the social functioning of individuals and families is related to the level of nurturance and social responsibility in the society in which they live. She undertook professional advocacy and political activity which transformed those concepts into social action. For Verne, daily participation in the struggle to produce a socially responsible society was as essential to her life as the air she breathed.

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Health Conservation and WPA (1939)

The following address was delivered by Mrs. Florence Kerr, Assistant Commissioner, Work Projects Administration. “In our WPA project work, we have come to grips with the problem of public health on a number of important fronts…we are not just talking about the need for better sanitation the need for more medical, dental and nursing service, the need of school children for hot, well-balanced lunches, the need of home visits to underprivileged families in time of illness…We’re…doing something about them.”

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Terminology Of Social Casework: An Attempt At Theoretical Clarification (1954)

Although it might seem presumptuous to encompass in a portion of a paper so vast a topic as the scope and function of social casework, it is necessary to attempt at least a sketch of this. The reason is that social casework is in constant flux. As it responds to two sets of influences, changes in society and the findings of the social and biological sciences, it takes on a role which I believe makes it quite different from what it was twenty or thirty years ago.

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Friends (Quakers) in Prison Reform

This entry was in the files of Charles Richmond Henderson (1848 – 1915), a notable sociologist and prison reformer. The new note that it struck was its emphasis upon the fact that all the interests of society were affected by the existence of the depraved and unfortunate classes, and that therefore the work in their behalf was a social task which must be shared by the whole community.

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Pennsylvania Prison Society

“…their object, as stated in their Preamble was to discover “such degree and modes of punishment” as might restore our “fellow creatures to virtue and happiness.” In the spirit of the Founder of Christianity they proposed to extend compassion toward the fallen by “alleviating” the unwholesome conditions in prisons and by mitigating the “unnecessary severity” of punishments.”

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Child Growth and Development: A Report (1954)

Excerpt from Recorder’s Report, Institute on Child Growth and Development, Harvard School of Public Health, 1954. “Rights are derived from basic needs which must be met to insure optimal opportunity for growth and development into healthy individuals and thereby into a healthy, effective society.”

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