Eduard Christian Lindeman was a remarkable social worker but he is less well known than other early stalwarts. Many factors contributed to this. He was not a self-promoter, he was not a specialist and worked in other fields, and he was not a clinician. Despite these “deficits” his life and writings are of continued value to social work.
Continue Reading »Let me now sum up why I think these three women were great and, as or forebears, worthy of admiration and emulation. First, a caveat. They were not great because they were women. We can be proud they were women, but the qualities that marked them for greatness are not sex related. They were great because they had powerful minds, which they never ceased to sharpen with new knowledge and new experiences….They were great because they cared about what happened to people and they believed in the worth and dignity of ever living creature….They were great because they were fighters. They preserved against great obstacles – obstacles they faced as women and obstacles generated by their advanced ideas.
Continue Reading »The influence of social work on public health administration is found in the development of every branch of that service in the past fifty years. The recreation movement, the child welfare movement, and such special developments as workingmen’s compensation in the industrial field have all been influenced by the humanitarian interests of the forces interested in social work, and each of these has had a direct bearing upon the health of the several communities in this country.
Continue Reading »For the purpose of this discussion we shall define social action as the systematic, conscious effort directly to influence the basic social conditions and policies out of which arise the problems of social adjustment and maladjustment to which our service as social workers is addressed. This definition itself may not satisfy all of us to begin with, for it has at least one debatable limitation. While it does not deny, neither does it specifically acknowledge or emphasize the potential and actual indirect influence upon the total social scene which may emanate from the specific services social workers render to particular individuals and groups, through the traditional primary task of helping people to find and use their own strength and the resources around them for the solution of their own problems and the fulfillment of their own lives.
Continue Reading »Assuming, then, that field work of this sort is an essential part of the social worker’s training, numerous questions of organization arise that present many difficulties, not only to the schools, but to our long-suffering friends, the representatives of the social agencies of our respective communities. How much of the student’s time is to be given to field work, and how can the practical problem of the distribution of the student’s time be arranged? To what agencies shall the time of students in training be entrusted. and how shall their work be supervised? How much time is to be given to any one agency? And what is the relation of field work to classroom work, lectures and conferences?
Continue Reading »In a 1915 presentation, Porter Lee said: Whichever of these conceptions (of social work) command the greatest measure of support from those who call themselves social workers, the proponents of all of them agree in speaking of social work as a profession. If it is or is to be a profession, has it definite characteristics which will admit all those who claim the name, or which will automatically exclude some? The announcements of this conference describe this as the greatest gathering of social workers on the continent. Our membership includes public relief officials, institution officers, play leaders, parish workers, charity organization secretaries, probation officers, placing out agents, nurses, settlement workers, medical social service workers, prison heads, friendly visitors, truant officers, matrons, teachers of special groups, members of boards of directors, tenement inspectors, public welfare directors, social investigators, executives of agencies for social legislation, industrial betterment leaders, those who work with immigrants, factory inspectors and-to avoid omitting any-many others. Is the tie which gives coherence to this group a professional one?
Continue Reading »Early in his presentation, Abraham Flexner said: “…However, I have not been asked to decide whether social work is a full-time or a part-time occupation, whether, in a word, it is a professional or an amateur occupation. I assume that every difficult occupation requires the entire time of those who take it seriously, though of course work can also be found for volunteers with something less than all their time or strength to offer. The question put to me is a more technical one. The term profession, strictly used, as opposed to business or handicraft, is a title of peculiar distinction, coveted by many activities. Thus far it has been pretty indiscriminately used. Almost any occupation not obviously a business is apt to classify itself as a profession. Doctors, lawyers, preachers, musicians, engineers, journalists, trained nurses, trapeze and dancing masters, equestrians, and chiropodists-all speak of their profession.
Continue Reading »I know that some leaders feel that this would be quite futile, that social case work as a separate discipline is soon to disappear, to be absorbed into medicine on the one hand and education’ on the other. Both of these are welcome to absorb all that they can contain, but there is going to remain a large field quite neglected unless we cultivate it. As democracy advances there can be neither freedom nor equality without that adaptation to native differences, without that intensive study and intensive use of social relationships for which social case work stands.
Continue Reading »Community organization must never be seen as merely a job. We are working with the materials out of which a community is built, a cooperative society is fashioned. We are in the thick of the personal, group, and inter-group relationships that make up modern social life. The community organization worker needs a sense of vocation. He is performing an essential function. He is a producer and conserver of social values. He has a vital and crucial role to play in the social drama of our time-the role of a servant of democracy.
Continue Reading »Urban League finds it easy to talk about the principles of good housing for all the people, but when steps to attain that housing contravene the purposes of profit interest groups, threaten to change the racial character of a given neighborhood, or run into the cross fire of opposing citizen interests, the League finds that principles constitute one thing and practice something entirely different. Thus, in organizing the community for social action, it must be remembered that frequently all the community cannot be organized, and a choice, therefore, must be made as to with which groups the agency will work. It mut be remembered, also, that even when over-all community support is essential, the cells of hidden or open resistance must be located and either isolated or dissolved before the organizing process can gain its full momentum.
Continue Reading »