A definition of social work: A thesis in sociology

								

occasioned most of the inquiry as to what social work may be. Today in
the administrative departments of Federal and State governments, in the
churches, the courts, the schools, the hospitals there is work being
done which has a double allegiance. On the one hand it is responsible
to government, religion, law, education or public health, as the case
may be, and on the other it is all alike responsible to social work.
The persons who engage in this work are as much social workers as those
in any traditionally philanthropic field and have simply followed
persons whom they are trying to help into situations which philanthropy
did not formerly consider to be its business. Philanthropy has long
taken an interest in jails and reform schools, it has only quite
recently followed into court anyone still unconvicted. This it does
in the case of children and is beginning to do for some classes of
adults. The social worker of the adult court is the probation officer,
a representative of voluntary chivalry toward the defendant, standing
in the very stronghold of implacable justice. The contrast between the
points of view of criminal law and social work is clearly put by a
judge in describing the function of the juvenile court. “The inquiry
(in the juvenile court) is not to determine whether the child is a
criminal or not, but to determine its status in relationship to its
need of the care and protection of the state. Being adjudged in need
of such special care the state assumes its guardianship and oversight,
always for the welfare of the child. The aims and methods of the courts
which administer our criminal laws proceed upon an entirely different
theory. Our penal laws are enacted for the purpose of promoting the
happiness and well-being of society at large, and any who violate
them are termed criminals and outlawed as unfit units of society. The
penalty provided for under these laws is imposed with the end in view
of deterring the offender from again violating his obligation to the
body politic and also of deterring others who might be like-minded.”[27]
In some other fields the introduction of the social worker simply adds
a new sort of service to what is already given. The obligations of both
the doctor and the medical social worker are to the welfare of the
patient, but their work is complementary. Often the social worker has
responsibilities no less than the doctor’s but her diagnosis is of a
situation and its possible interference with the curative process the
doctor prescribes. She must discover and change working conditions or
personal habits that tend to defeat the doctor’s efforts. It is not
a mere accident that this became the task of a social worker. It is
not because it was no medical job and the charitably inclined were
available for it. It is because of a certain characteristic of social
work which is a direct result of the single minded address to the
service of need--namely, a tendency to look upon people from no point