A definition of social work: A thesis in sociology

								

that indicated by the word “social”; men’s relations to each other
rather than their relations to nature. The interest inherited from
charity is an interest in untoward situations; social work, like
charity turns like a compass to the magnet of need; opportunity,
success, superiority do not attract it unless they are beset with some
difficulty which it can remove; handicap, deprivation, insufficiency
offer the challenge to which it responds. The method adopted from
science is that of observation and generalization; social work has
established the fact that just as man cannot live without a certain
food supply, so he cannot thrive as a conscious being without a modicum
of interest, incentive, and leeway of freedom, so that matters long
considered intimate and implicit have now become the objects of close
and deliberate observation. And just as men, endlessly varied in
physical appearance are to the physiologist of one general pattern and
as, far more strangely, the infinite variety of mind is known by the
psychologist to have its common laws of operation, so, strangest and
most illusive of all, men individually unpredictable, do yet, in the
main, follow laws of social behaviour which it is in the power of an
observer to detect. We can say that the main act and final object of
social work are those of charity. The means and methods are those of
science moving in the fields of charitable concern. Social work seems
to comprise a group of allied activities called by a common name and
considered to be but various phases of a single undertaking because
they are all engaged in spontaneous efforts to extend benefits in
response to the evidence of need; they all show a major interest in
improving the social relationship of their beneficiaries and all avail
themselves of scientific knowledge and employ scientific methods.
We may propose as a tentative definition, to be tested and carried
further in the chapters which follow, that social work includes all
voluntary attempts to extend benefits in response to need which are
concerned with social relationships and which avail themselves of
scientific knowledge and employ scientific methods.

FOOTNOTES:
[18] Professor C. A. Ellwell, in Charities and the Commons for 1907, p.
187.
[19] Beatrice and Sidney Webb, The Prevention of Destitution, p. 330.
[20] Owen R. Lovejoy, Proceedings of National Conference of Social
Work, 1919, pp. 666-7.
[21] Mary E. Richmond, Ibid. 1920, p. 254.
[22] Mary E. Richmond, Social Diagnosis, p. 29.
[23] Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House, p. 162.
[24] See especially Mary E. Richmond, What Is Social Case Work?
[25] Beatrice and Sidney Webb, The Prevention of Destitution, p. 333.
[26] When such inquiries have been undertaken by the government they
have often been proposed and prepared for by social work. See for
example: Lillian D. Wald, The House on Henry Street, on the U. S.