Category Archives: Social Work History Network

Social work, neglect and the renewal of ‘poverty aware practice’

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Carl PurcellCarl 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 →

How the spread of Christianity informed state responses to poverty

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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 →

Something lost that’s worth revisiting

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Brian Parrott reflects on the uncertain place of ‘community’ within the social work profession. (711 words)

In the 1968 Seebohm Report-influenced years for social work, the word ‘community’ was widely used, whether ‘community development’, ‘community work’, ‘patch working’, ‘community social work’ or other.

The common essence was something about the interrelationship of an individual or family’s circumstances with the place in which they live – its features, its wellbeing and the social forces and policies which impact on them.

During the first half of the 1980s, what came to be called ‘community social work’ in local authority social services departments or in projects supported by them, was described, promoted, supported and criticised. It has lived on ‘below the surface’ as other events in children’s services, adult social care, political favour, or public funding have dictated the nature and focus of social work.

For many of us, this has meant that something was ‘lost’ that might merit revisiting, particularly now in the contexts of greater focus on user-led services, collaborative working and ‘co-production’. Continue reading →