A definition of social work: A thesis in sociology

								


       sections which have been cited as discussing conditions

       created by the war.

    1919 and 1920--UNITING OF NATIVE AND FOREIGN-BORN IN AMERICA.



       State immigrant commission, labor organizations and public

       education as Americanizers, the foreign language worker

       and foreign language press, foreign organizations and

       family welfare, democracy and immigration, neighborhood

       life, and the treatment of immigrant heritages.
Such, in briefest possible outline is the scope of the annual
conference on social work. What have its papers contributed to the
correction or expansion of a definition?
The first proposition of the tentative definition was that all forms of
social work originated in a spontaneous effort to extend benefits. How
is this affected by the testimony of the conference? In the first place
it is abundantly confirmed. The conference papers deal pre-eminently
with pioneering in the extension of benefits and opportunities. The
phraseology does not always suggest this but one has only to look
beyond the phraseology to the action in order to find it. If we look
at the first section we see it to be in effect proposing that the
whole community shall deliberately and without delay rearrange not
only schools and home life but industry and general living conditions
so as to give to all its children opportunity and encouragement such
as are now given only to the most fortunate. We find it advocating a
scheme of child welfare on a county basis which shall seek out “all
children in need of care for any reason” and demanding enforcement of
proper health precautions for the children of unenlightened parents
and a real chance in life for the illegitimate child. Among the titles
of this one section at one conference appear “Progress Toward Better
Laws,” “Planks in a 1920 Platform,” “Lessons from North Carolina,”
“A Community Program, etc.”[33] But these platforms and programs
are not to be ascribed to the community in any sense except that of
being proposed for the community as a whole by social workers. At the
same conference they are discussing “Social Workers as Interpreters”
of social conditions and methods of getting “publicity” for their
aims.[34] The same sort of title takes up the tale in the next section,
a “Program” again, “Aims and Methods” twice, “A Plan,” and so on
throughout the conference. Although other professions, education and
medicine for example, are constantly busy jacking up standards, their
general undertakings are fully accepted. For all regular purveyances
of education and medicine the community has given a blanket order and
expects to pay “within reason.” Social work is in a different case
for it is constantly trying to put over something which is still but
tentatively and experimentally accepted and depends root and branch on
the willingness of some people to do, out of hand, for others.[35]