The
development of social work in the United States reflects an ongoing synthesis
of ideas derived from many different cultures. While terms such as charity and philanthropy
have Greek roots and are based on Biblical principles, modern social work
concepts owe much to the influence of the Koran and the mutual aid practices of
Native Americans, the African-American community, and immigrants from all over
the world.
Before the
American Revolution, formal systems of poor relief, child welfare, and even
mental health services had been established in North America. These systems
served a dual role of compassion and protection. By the early 19th century,
states began taking responsibility for distributing relief from towns and
counties. Since government responses proved largely insufficient or ineffective
in addressing growing social problems, private benevolent societies and
self-help organizations the predecessors of modern social service agencies
played increasing roles in this regard.
The roots
of US social work date back to this period and the efforts of upper-class women
and men in church-based and secular charitable organizations to address the
consequences of poverty, urbanization, and immigration. These untrained proto-social
workers, known as "friendly visitors," sought to help poor
individuals through moral persuasion and personal example. Organizations such
as the Association for the Improvement of the Condition of the Poor and the
Children's Aid Society began investigating social conditions in areas such as
tenement housing and child welfare.
The Civil
War stimulated the emergence of largescale private social welfare initiatives,
such as the US Sanitary Commission and the Red Cross. In the War's aftermath,
the short-lived Freedmen's Bureau (the first Federal social welfare program) provided
assistance to newly emancipated slaves. State boards of charity arose to
improve the management of institutions constructed during the previous
generation.
In the half
century after the Civil War, rapid industrial expansion produced a dramatic increase
in individual and community needs. The most notable social changes of this
period included a series of economic depressions (known then as
"panics") and their consequences; new manifestations of racism
following the end of Reconstruction in 1876; and a dramatic increase in
immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe.
Using
concepts derived from business and industry, reformers attempted to respond to
some of these developments by regulating public relief distribution through
so-called "scientific charity." In 1877, the first American Charity
Organization Society (COS) based on such principles was founded in Buffalo, New
York. Many COS clients, however, particularly poor Jews, Catholics, and African
Americans, preferred more personal systems of self-help and mutual aid
established by their own communities.
Settlement
houses reflected a different type of organizational response to the impact of industrialization
and immigration and introduced an alternative model of a social service agency
a form of urban mission. The first US settlement, the Neighborhood Guild in New
York City, was established in 1886. Three years later, Jane Addams and Ellen
Gates Starr founded Hull House in Chicago, which became the most famous
American settlement.
Unlike the
individually oriented COS, settlements focused on the environmental causes of poverty
and expanding the working opportunities of the poor. They conducted research, helped
establish the juvenile court system, created widow’s pension programs, promoted
legislation prohibiting child labor, and introduced public health reforms and
the concept of social insurance.
By 1910,
there were more than 400 settlements, including those founded by African Americans
to provide services denied by segregated agencies. Settlement activities soon expanded
beyond specific neighborhoods and led to the creation of national organizations
like the Women's Trade Union League, the National Consumers' League, the Urban League,
and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Settlement
leaders were instrumental in establishing the Federal Children's Bureau in
1912, headed by Julia Lathrop from Hull House. Settlement leaders also played
key roles in the major social movements of the period, including women's
suffrage, peace, labor, civil rights, and temperance.
While the
settlements focused on what later became group work and community organization,
social work in the COS increasingly focused on casework with individuals and families.
Sub-specialties in the areas of medical, psychiatric, and school social work
began to appear in the early twentieth century. The growth of casework as a
distinct area of practice also stimulated the creation of a formal social work
training program in 1898.
This
program, created by the New York COS in partnership with Columbia University, evolved
into the New York School of Philanthropy and, eventually, the Columbia
University School of Social Work. Early curricula emphasized practical work
rather than academic subjects.
Settlements
like the Chicago Commons also developed educational programs as early as 1901.
By 1908, it offered a full curriculum through the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy
(now the University of Chicago's School of Social Service Administration).
Formal
methods-oriented training programs spread through major urban areas, most of them
affiliated with private charitable organizations interested in standardizing
the practices of their volunteers. By 1919, there were seventeen schools of
social work affiliated as the Association of Training Schools of Professional
Schools of Social Work the antecedent of today's Council on Social Work Education
(CSWE).
Despite
these efforts, in 1915, in an invitational lecture at the National Conference
of Charities and Corrections entitled "Is Social Work a Profession?"
Dr. Abraham Flexner, the nation's leading authority on professional education,
asserted that the field lacked specificity, technical skills, or specialized
knowledge and could not be considered a profession. His lecture further
stimulated efforts already underway to consolidate experiential casework
knowledge into a standardized format. Consequently, by the 1920s, casework
emerged as the dominant form of professional social work in the United States.
During
World War I, the expansion of government agencies led to increased professionalism
in public-sector departments devoted to social welfare. Through the Red Cross
and the Army, the War also provided opportunities for social workers to apply casework
skills to the treatment of soldiers with "shell shock." Social
workers were now sought as specialists in the social adjustment of non-impoverished
populations.
Although
the Progressive movement declined after World War I, social work practice with individuals
and families continued to flourish. By 1927, over 100 child guidance clinics appeared
in which teams of psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers provided services
primarily to middle-class clients. A parallel development was the emergence of
the Community Chest movement, which rationalized charitable giving at the
community level and led to the creation of the United Way and its Health and
Welfare Councils.
The
Depression and the New Deal
In 1930,
the US social welfare system was an uncoordinated mixture of local and state public
relief agencies, supplemented by the modest resources of voluntary charitable organizations.
Public agencies, however, did not necessarily provide the same services, or relate
to one another administratively. Nor did voluntary organizations possess
sufficient resources to address the growing needs which the Great Depression
created.
The response
to the Depression profoundly influenced social work practice and redefined the
role of government as an instrument of social welfare. The public began to view
poverty as the result of economic circumstances rather than personal failure.
The idea that social welfare assistance was a government responsibility rather
than a private charitable function gained wider acceptance. These changes led
to the creation of a wide range of government programs under the Roosevelt
Administration the New Deal which ultimately evolved into a complex national
social welfare system. The New Deal also enhanced the status of the social work
profession, particularly through the contributions of individuals like Harry Hopkins
and Frances Perkins.
The
centerpiece of the dozens of social welfare programs that comprised the New
Deal was the Social Security Act of 1935. It expanded and improved standards of
social welfare throughout the country and provided recipients with some sense
of individual freedom and dignity. It helped establish a regular, unprecedented
role for the federal government as a source of aid and introduced the concept
of entitlement into the American political vocabulary. The scope of social
welfare expanded beyond financial relief to the poor to include housing, rural
problems, recreation and cultural activities, child welfare programs, and
diverse forms of social insurance to Americans of all classes.
These
policy developments significantly affected the social work profession by:
enhancing the field's visibility in the area of public welfare and creating
expanded work opportunities beyond private agency venues, introducing public
welfare and public policy as integral aspects of the profession, expanding the
practice of social work beyond previous urban limits to rural areas, and
reintroducing an emphasis on social reform. The growth of public welfare
programs also necessitated the recruitment of thousands of new social workers, whose
numbers doubled from 40,000 to 80,000 within a decade and became considerably more
diverse. This expansion led to recognition of the need for improved salaries
and working conditions and enhanced educational requirements.
World War
II and Post-War Academic Expansion
During
World War II many social workers accepted war-related assignments, spurred by the
establishment of a special classification for military social work and the
development of services for war-impacted communities. In the decade after the
War, considerable efforts were made to enhance the field's professional status.
These included increased standardization of agency practices, the development
of interdisciplinary doctoral training programs, and the creation of core MSW
curricula. The formation of CSWE in 1952 and the establishment of the National
Association of Social Workers in 1955 further strengthened the profession's
status of the profession.
The
post-war period was also one of significant change in US social welfare,
highlighted by the establishment of the Department of Health, Education, and
Welfare (HEW) in 1953. The primary beneficiaries of social policy changes between
1940 and 1960, however, were middle- income, white workers and, by the early 1960s,
the United States lagged considerably behind other Western industrialized
nations in the degree of social provision. At the same time, voluntary and
public sector agencies shifted the focus of services from low-income to middle-
and upper-income groups and reduced the role of community-based volunteers in
organizational decision making and service delivery. In a hostile political environment,
social activism declined and openly anti-welfare attitudes reemerged.
The
"War on Poverty" and the "Great Society"
In the
early 1960s, well-publicized exposes of poverty and the emergence of new "Structuralist"
perspectives on social problems forced Americans to rediscover the over 40 million
people, approximately one third of them children, whose lives had been bypassed
by modern economic and social progress. They inspired the development of new
kinds of social service organization, such as Mobilization for Youth in New
York, and led to President Johnson's proclamation of an "unconditional war
on poverty" in January 1964.
The primary
instrument of the "War on Poverty" was the Economic Opportunity Act
(EOA) which included such programs as the Job Corps, Upward Bound, the
Neighborhood Youth Corps, Community Action, Head Start, Legal Services, Foster
Grandparents, and the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO). In 1965, Congress
enacted Medicare and Medicaid, established the Department of Housing and Urban
Development (HUD), funded an array of services for the aged through the Older
Americans Act, and created the Food Stamp Program under the auspices of the
Department of Agriculture. The Elementary and Secondary School Education Act
overturned longstanding precedents and directed federal aid to local schools in
order to equalize educational opportunities for children. In 1966, the Model
Cities Act targeted certain urban areas with comprehensive services and
emphasized the concept of community control. Although the social work
profession did not influence public policies on the scale it had in the 1930s,
social workers played key roles throughout the 1960s in various anti-poverty
and community-action programs and helped train individuals in new organizations
like the Peace Corps and VISTA.
The 1970s
President
Nixon shifted the administration of anti-poverty programs to states and
localities. In 1972 and 1973, Congress passed the State and Local Fiscal
Assistance Act and the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA). This
legislation established the concept of revenue sharing and led ultimately to
the dismantling of the Office of Economic Opportunity. The most significant
social policy accomplishments of the Nixon Administration, however, were the
Social Security Amendments of 1972, which centralized and standardized aid to
disabled people and low-income elderly and indexed benefits to inflation. Food
stamps, child nutrition, and railroad retirement programs were also linked to cost-of-living
rates.
The passage
of Title XX of the Social Security Act in January 1975 reinforced the popular concept
of federal "revenue sharing" which provided states with maximum
flexibility in planning social services while promoting fiscal accountability.
During the Ford and Carter administrations, Title XX shaped the direction of
both public and nonprofit social services, with a particular focus on issues of
welfare dependency, child abuse and neglect, domestic violence, drug abuse, and
community mental health.
While
poverty continued to decline among the elderly in the 1970s, largely as a consequence
of benefit indexing and Medicare, a virtual freeze on Aid for Families with
Dependent
Children (AFDC) benefits after 1973 and a decline in the purchasing power of wages
produced a steady increase in poverty among children, particularly children of
color. In the late 1970s, the Carter Administration's creation of block grants
that combined formerly categorical programs into broad programmatic areas and
established a ceiling on total state expenditures in return for increasing
state control of spending patterns was a particularly significant development
that had major implications in the 1980s.
Although most
social reforms stagnated by the mid-1970s, there were considerable changes in
the social work profession throughout the decade, including the beginnings of multicultural
and gender awareness, which led to the development of new course content and efforts
to expand minority recruitment; the growth of multidisciplinary joint degree
programs with Schools of Urban Planning, Public Health, Public Policy,
Education, and Law; the recognition of the BSW as the entry-level professional
degree; and the growth of private practice among social workers.
The
"Reagan Revolution"
The policy
changes that were inspired by the so-called "Reagan Revolution" of
the 1980s compelled social workers to rely increasingly, if not exclusively, on
private-sector solutions for social welfare problems. Entire programs were reduced,
frozen, or eliminated. Additional block grants were created in such areas as
child welfare and community development. A looming crisis in the funding of Social
Security and Medicare was forestalled in 1983 through modest tax increases and
benefit reductions. At the same time, ballooning federal deficits precluded any
major new social welfare initiatives. Consequently, during times of overall
prosperity poverty rates soared, particularly among children, young families,
and persons of color. By the early 1990s, the number of people officially
listed as "poor" had risen to 36 million.
Major
cutbacks in government funding of social welfare created new challenges for
social workers and social service agencies, as they confronted new and more
complex social problems such as the crack cocaine epidemic, the spread of
HIV/AIDS, domestic violence, and homelessness. Social workers focused increased
attention on developing effective management skills and increased their
advocacy activities.
The Clinton
Years
From the
outset, President Clinton's policy options were severely constrained by the
budget deficits his administration inherited. Stymied in the development of an
ambitious social welfare agenda, such as a comprehensive national health insurance
program, he focused instead on budgetary restraint and the promotion of economic
growth. After considerable debate, he signed a controversial welfare reform
bill in 1996 which replaced AFDC with block grants to states that included time
limits and conditions on the receipt of cash assistance (now called Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families [TANF]). The legislation also devolved
responsibility for welfare program development to states and increased the roles
of private-sector and faith-based organizations in program implementation.
President
Clinton left office in January 2001 with several major social welfare issues unresolved.
While some progress was made in providing health care for children in low income
families, over 43 million Americans still lacked coverage. The soaring cost of prescription
drugs threatened the economic well-being of elderly Americans. Proposals to provide
this benefit through Medicare and prevent a future crisis in funding for the
Social Security system when the "baby boomer" generation retired made
little progress in the 1990s because of political gridlock. Nor was any
substantial progress made in addressing the growing HIV/AIDS epidemic,
particularly within the African-American community, or the persistent problems
of homelessness and drug abuse. Finally, looming on the horizon were the
potentially catastrophic consequences of enforcing the five-year lifetime cap
on TANF recipients as the nation's economy cooled.
Policy
developments in the 1990s had serious consequences for the social work
profession. Welfare reform led to the restructuring of public welfare
departments and to greater pressure on nonprofit organizations to fill gaps in
service provision. The advent of managed care in the health and mental health
fields dramatically altered the practice of many social workers, as did changes
in child welfare policies. Although political opposition to Affirmative Action
programs grew during these years, social workers, particularly in university settings,
increasingly emphasized racial, gender, and ethnic diversity in their curricula
and recruitment policies. NASW revised its Code of Ethics to make the pursuit
of social justice an ethical imperative, and CSWE required all programs to teach
students how to work for economic and social justice.
At the same
time, organizations such as Americorps were established in 1994 to promote greater
involvement of young people in communities. With the support of the NIMH Center
for Social Work Research and the Society for Social Work and Research, schools
of social work significantly increased their funded research and evaluation
activities in such areas as mental health, aging, domestic violence, and child
welfare.
US Social
Welfare in the 21st Century