APPENDIX I
Edward T. Devine in “Social Work”says (p. 21): “Social work, then is the sum of all the efforts made by society to ‘take up its own slack’ to provide for individuals when its established institutions fail them, to supplement those established institutions and to modify them at those points at which they have proved to be badly adapted to social needs. * * * It may be well done or badly done; according to the most enlightened system which intelligence and experience and sympathy and vision can devise or according to the archaic methods of careless and lazy emotion. * * * It includes everything which is done by society for the benefit of those who are not in position to compete on fair terms with their fellows from whatever motive it may be done, by whatever agency or whatever means and with whatever results.”Edward T. Devine and Lilian Brant in “American Social Work in the Twentieth Century”say (the first words of the book): “In the United States of America ‘social work’ has come into use in recent years as a comprehensive term, including charity and philanthropy, public relief, punishment and reformation and all other conscious efforts, whether by the state or on private initiative, to provide for the dependent, the sick, and the criminal, to diminish the amount of poverty, disease, and crime, and to improve general living and working conditions.”These statements obviously are not trying to distinguish between “social work” and the more primitive forms of “charity” and “philanthropy.”
Edward T. Devine in “Social Work”says (p. 21): “Social work, then is the sum of all the efforts made by society to ‘take up its own slack’ to provide for individuals when its established institutions fail them, to supplement those established institutions and to modify them at those points at which they have proved to be badly adapted to social needs. * * * It may be well done or badly done; according to the most enlightened system which intelligence and experience and sympathy and vision can devise or according to the archaic methods of careless and lazy emotion. * * * It includes everything which is done by society for the benefit of those who are not in position to compete on fair terms with their fellows from whatever motive it may be done, by whatever agency or whatever means and with whatever results.”
Edward T. Devine and Lilian Brant in “American Social Work in the Twentieth Century”say (the first words of the book): “In the United States of America ‘social work’ has come into use in recent years as a comprehensive term, including charity and philanthropy, public relief, punishment and reformation and all other conscious efforts, whether by the state or on private initiative, to provide for the dependent, the sick, and the criminal, to diminish the amount of poverty, disease, and crime, and to improve general living and working conditions.”
These statements obviously are not trying to distinguish between “social work” and the more primitive forms of “charity” and “philanthropy.”
The pamphlet “Social Work,” issued by the American Association of Social Workers in 1922 disclaims any intention “to give an authoritative definition of these terms (i.e., charity, philanthropy, and social service) or of ‘social work,’” but it does authoritatively indicate that “social work as a profession” may have occasion to differentiate itself from charity and philanthropy (pp. 3 and 4). “In discussing social work as a profession it is necessary to clarify certain conceptions which are popularly confused with it. As is the case with any activity that has emerged into professional status and differentiated itself from the kind of activity in which any one of ordinary intelligence might participate, social work must live down a variety of names and conceptions which were common to it in its early and unprofessional forms.” “So we come to the term ‘social work’ for a connotation which at least has implicit implications of a process requiring specialized knowledge and skill sufficient to be called professional.” “It is well also to point out here that emphasis must be placed on ‘process’ as an aid to keeping in mind the fact that not what is done, but how it is done, is what constitutes the test of professional activity.”“Education for Social Work,” by Jesse Frederick Steiner(University of Chicago Press, 1921) gives, as its first chapter, a five-page statement of “The Nature of Social Work” which does not lend itself to quotation otherwise thanin toto. It reports about the same conclusions as this thesis, which was prepared before Mr. Steiner’s study.Porter R. Leespeaking to the National Conference of Social Work in 1915 (see Report p. 597) described three conceptions of the social worker. First, “Any person is a social worker if his work has conscious social purpose,although his vocation may be any one of the historic forms of human activity. The second conception includes as social workers those who are engaged in so-called preventive work, that is to say, those whose efforts are directed towards social legislation, toward the development of the social point of view in the general public and toward readjustments in social institutions and social habits. * * * social work in this sense is not concerned with those who are disabled by adverse conditions of life but with the adverse conditions. The third conception of the social worker on the other hand identifies him primarily with efforts on behalf of the subnormal. To one holding this conception the social worker is one who endeavors through case work to reestablish disabled families and individuals in a routine of normal life. This does not preclude interest in social legislation and other forms of preventive work, but these are not the first task of the social worker. When social work as a generic term first came into general use leaders in the work for dependent families, neglected children, the defective, the delinquent and the destitute sick comprised almost the entire group to which it was applied.” In the 1920 Conference (see Report p. 466) Mr. Lee said: “The subject matter of social work is the adjustment of men to their environment. * * * The necessity for social work arises because of the difficulties faced by men in making this adjustment. These difficulties are sometimes in the man and sometimes in the environment. Some factors in the environment bear too heavily upon all men, some bear too heavily upon a smaller number. * * * A large part of social work is conducted with the purpose of softening the effect of environmental factors which bear with undue severity upon all men. Another large part of social work aims at the development of greater resourcefulness inall men in meeting environmental demands. The greater part of social work, however, is at present devoted to the development of a higher adjusting power in those persons who are most handicapped by environment or a modification of those particular environmental factors which handicap them.”Miss Mary E. Richmond in “What is Social Case Work?”(Russell Sage Foundation, N.Y., 1922) breaks up what Mr. Lee calls “preventive work” into three parts (pp. 223, 224). “The other forms of social work all of which interplay with case work, are three—group work, social reform, and social research. Case work seeks to effect better social relations by dealing with individuals one by one or within the intimate group of the family. But social work also achieves the same general ends in these other ways. It includes a wide variety of group activities—settlement work, recreational work, club, neighborhood and local community work—in which the individual, though still met face to face, becomes one of a number. By a method different from that employed in either case or group work, though with the same end in view, social reform seeks to improve conditions in the mass, chiefly through social propaganda and social legislation. Whether the immediate object be better housing, better working conditions, better use of leisure, or a long list of other objectives, the main purpose in these different social reforms still is to advance the development of our human kind by improving social relations. Finally, social research with its precious freight of original discovery in all the fields covered by social work, has also the secondary task of assembling known facts in order to reinterpret them for use in social reform, in group work and in case work.”
The pamphlet “Social Work,” issued by the American Association of Social Workers in 1922 disclaims any intention “to give an authoritative definition of these terms (i.e., charity, philanthropy, and social service) or of ‘social work,’” but it does authoritatively indicate that “social work as a profession” may have occasion to differentiate itself from charity and philanthropy (pp. 3 and 4). “In discussing social work as a profession it is necessary to clarify certain conceptions which are popularly confused with it. As is the case with any activity that has emerged into professional status and differentiated itself from the kind of activity in which any one of ordinary intelligence might participate, social work must live down a variety of names and conceptions which were common to it in its early and unprofessional forms.” “So we come to the term ‘social work’ for a connotation which at least has implicit implications of a process requiring specialized knowledge and skill sufficient to be called professional.” “It is well also to point out here that emphasis must be placed on ‘process’ as an aid to keeping in mind the fact that not what is done, but how it is done, is what constitutes the test of professional activity.”
“Education for Social Work,” by Jesse Frederick Steiner(University of Chicago Press, 1921) gives, as its first chapter, a five-page statement of “The Nature of Social Work” which does not lend itself to quotation otherwise thanin toto. It reports about the same conclusions as this thesis, which was prepared before Mr. Steiner’s study.
Porter R. Leespeaking to the National Conference of Social Work in 1915 (see Report p. 597) described three conceptions of the social worker. First, “Any person is a social worker if his work has conscious social purpose,although his vocation may be any one of the historic forms of human activity. The second conception includes as social workers those who are engaged in so-called preventive work, that is to say, those whose efforts are directed towards social legislation, toward the development of the social point of view in the general public and toward readjustments in social institutions and social habits. * * * social work in this sense is not concerned with those who are disabled by adverse conditions of life but with the adverse conditions. The third conception of the social worker on the other hand identifies him primarily with efforts on behalf of the subnormal. To one holding this conception the social worker is one who endeavors through case work to reestablish disabled families and individuals in a routine of normal life. This does not preclude interest in social legislation and other forms of preventive work, but these are not the first task of the social worker. When social work as a generic term first came into general use leaders in the work for dependent families, neglected children, the defective, the delinquent and the destitute sick comprised almost the entire group to which it was applied.” In the 1920 Conference (see Report p. 466) Mr. Lee said: “The subject matter of social work is the adjustment of men to their environment. * * * The necessity for social work arises because of the difficulties faced by men in making this adjustment. These difficulties are sometimes in the man and sometimes in the environment. Some factors in the environment bear too heavily upon all men, some bear too heavily upon a smaller number. * * * A large part of social work is conducted with the purpose of softening the effect of environmental factors which bear with undue severity upon all men. Another large part of social work aims at the development of greater resourcefulness inall men in meeting environmental demands. The greater part of social work, however, is at present devoted to the development of a higher adjusting power in those persons who are most handicapped by environment or a modification of those particular environmental factors which handicap them.”
Miss Mary E. Richmond in “What is Social Case Work?”(Russell Sage Foundation, N.Y., 1922) breaks up what Mr. Lee calls “preventive work” into three parts (pp. 223, 224). “The other forms of social work all of which interplay with case work, are three—group work, social reform, and social research. Case work seeks to effect better social relations by dealing with individuals one by one or within the intimate group of the family. But social work also achieves the same general ends in these other ways. It includes a wide variety of group activities—settlement work, recreational work, club, neighborhood and local community work—in which the individual, though still met face to face, becomes one of a number. By a method different from that employed in either case or group work, though with the same end in view, social reform seeks to improve conditions in the mass, chiefly through social propaganda and social legislation. Whether the immediate object be better housing, better working conditions, better use of leisure, or a long list of other objectives, the main purpose in these different social reforms still is to advance the development of our human kind by improving social relations. Finally, social research with its precious freight of original discovery in all the fields covered by social work, has also the secondary task of assembling known facts in order to reinterpret them for use in social reform, in group work and in case work.”
A fair amount of searching has failed to reveal many statements which do as much as the above toward definingsocial work in succinct and specific terms. One finds instead descriptions which, while satisfactory enough for the purposes for which each was intended, ascribe to it no really distinctive character but rather present it in generalizations equally true of other disinterested undertakings, or by making it synonymous with applied sociology or applied religion simply throw the burden of definition onto those other terms leaving the matter as indefinite as before.