Social Work History Network | Health & Social Care Workforce:

Carl Purcell, of the Health and Social Care Workforce Research Unit, King’s College London, reflects on a recent meeting of the Social Work History Network (17 June 2024). (791 words)

At a recent seminar organised by the Social Work History Network Dr Michael Lambert, Professor June Thoburn and Professor Marian Brandon reflected on the history of the concept child ‘neglect’ and how this has been redefined and responded to by policymakers and social workers.

The evacuation of children from towns and cities during the second world war exposed the appalling suffering of many children living in desperate poverty. Lady Allen of Hartwood was spurred to write a letter to The Times that provoked a remarkable political response. Following the Curtis Report (1946), and subsequent inquiries, the Children Act 1948 established local authority Children’s Departments to make arrangements when children, including neglected children, needed to be received in to care. Subsequently, the Children and Young Persons (Amendment) Act 1952 provided powers to actively investigate neglect.

Many health and social work professionals working in this space located the underlying causes of neglect in the personal characteristics of parents. Jones wrote: “Their lives are characterised by dirt, disintegration and disorder. They are often shiftless, apathetic, irresponsible to an almost incredible degree”[1]. But some social policy writers were critical of this perspective. Barbara Wootton argued: “About the only common characteristics of these families, it seems, are the financial ones”[2]. Continue reading →

Dr Karen Lyons, emeritus professor of international social work at London Metropolitan University, reflects on a Social Work History Network webinar (24 April 2024) examining the development of ‘global’ social work values. (748 words)

Social work is generally understood to be a ‘local’ activity, particular to the society and communities within which it is practised.

It is also increasingly identified as a global profession with common values. But is this supposedly global nature in fact a construct prescribed by Britain and the US in the development and the dominance of a particular form of Western thinking?

These questions were recently explored at an event organised by the Social Work History Network. Mark Henrikson, of Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand, took us back a great deal further than the commonly understood origins of social work. He showed how the Church has played a significant role in how societies have viewed people who were poor or ‘different’ in some way.

Henrikson traced the origins of ‘Western’ social work thinking and values, with its current emphasis on individual choice and responsibility, through biblical texts to Calvinism, which took hold in some parts of Europe from the 16th century and spread to North America. Continue reading →