Evolution of Social Work: From Charity to Professional Practice
School
Trent University**We aren't endorsed by this school
Course
SWRK 1000H
Subject
History
Date
Dec 10, 2024
Pages
2
Uploaded by BrigadierScienceGerbil39
History of social work profession (classified):Starts with the industrial revolutionMove from country to city. Urban crowding leads to disease and poverty.Caregiving is done by the community in the Elizabethan eraChurches would give out money and foodThe poor laws: Deserving poor- addressed the needs of people with no fault of their own (disability), and people who were elderly or had illnesses- set up in the almshouse to keep them alive (not comfortable but basic)Undeserving poor: people in need of help because they did something wrong (lack of good work ethic or morals like alcoholism)- sent to workhouses to work horrible jobs.There was then a change in the social economic timeWe got electricity and power Three historical movements that defined SW:oVictorian charity movement:Stopped listening to the church and started using a scientific approachRise of rationalist efforts to understand poverty and the Victorian charity approachDeserving and undeserving poor (almshouses, workhouses) Poverty is seen as rooted in back character, sin, lack of industry and thrift.Focused on uncivilized, unreligious, unCanadian foreignersIn practice, the COS (charity organization society) involved:Charity “friendly” visitor assessingthe poor in their homesVisitors often upper-class womenFocus on moral character, deservingness, normative viewAdvice based on assessment (precursor of casework)oSocial reformers: A group of people that came together to try and fix their communitiesThought the problem of poverty was due to the social changes happeningParty, a response to a COS responseCritical of charity workers and the goal of moral reformViewed social conditions as harmful, poverty caused by social structuresSocial reform through activism around issues such as child labour oSocial gospelProtestants seeking to improve social conditions as a religious practiceSocial justice and action around poverty seen as a Christian ethicLocated poverty and personal problems as social illsCanadianize and Christianize immigrantsTied to union movement and socialismJ.S WordsworthForerunners to the modern NDP partySettlement houses:
provided education, recreation, support and sometimes housing for the poor and new immigrantsThe Settlement House movement:Was informed by the Social Gospel movement, as well as the Social Reformers (both discussed above)Located personal problems in social conditions, not personal moral failingsFocused on poverty and lack of resourcesInvolved its workers (mostly educated, middle class) lived among the poor, as neighboursRise of professionalization:Private> public responsibilitySocial work as an occupationOn-the-job training >to> university educationAd hoc intervention >to> systems for diagnosis, respondingFriendly helper >to> trained workersFocus on micro practice, casework (Richmond)With professionalism has come managerialism The Sixties Scoop:Linked to/extension of residential schoolsHad the explicit goal to “take the Indian out of the child”Apprehension and adopting out tens of thousands of Indigenous childrenChild welfare workers assessed based on (and pathologized those who dared to behave differently from) the parenting practices of white, middle-class homes in middle-class neighbourhoods;Indigenous parenting itself as “unfit”Called systematic process of colonialism and racism, cultural genocideGovernment Apology, and Truth and Reconciliation Commissions: ha The Social work profession engaged in Reconciliation (truth-telling, acknowledging, restoring, relating)