Social worker

“ To discover groundless fears, then, fears of poverty, of ridicule, of marital unhappiness, and to cure them by bringing them to light, is the task that I think every social worker should consider as part of her job, in so far as she is connected with medical work, as she must be always so far as I see. ”

“ To one holding this conception the social worker is one who endeavors through case work to reestablish disabled families and individuals in a routine of normal life. This does not preclude interest in social legislation and other forms of preventive work, but these are not the first task of the social worker. When social work as a generic term first came into general use leaders in the work for dependent families, neglected children, the defective, the delinquent and the destitute sick comprised almost the entire group to which it was applied. ”

“ Any person is a social worker if his work has conscious social purpose, [Pg 83] although his vocation may be any one of the historic forms of human activity. The second conception includes as social workers those who are engaged in so-called preventive work, that is to say, those whose efforts are directed towards social legislation, toward the development of the social point of view in the general public and toward readjustments in social institutions and social habits. ”

“ On the whole, the safest form of giving that I know, that which is surest to perpetuate itself, to be [Pg 166] planted like a seed and go on without our having to stand by it, is giving information—a cold-sounding thing, but sometimes very useful. One difference between the social worker and the person for whom she works ought to be that the social worker has had more education, more freedom, more friends, more opportunity to look around the world and see resources. ”

“ Similarly we can ascribe to social work, under whatever system of society it may be conducted, the functions of completing inadequacy, extending benefits and rescuing the individual from the category. In a community where no one was poor or out of work, where abundance of pure food and decent housing were available for all, where wholesome recreation was attainable and attractive, and physical and mental hygiene as much a matter of course as school attendance, the tasks of the social worker would not be what they are now ”

“ In recent years governments, municipal and other authorities, industrial corporations and voluntary associations of all kinds have been compelled to make ever-extending provisions for industrial protection, social insurance, public health service, housing improvement, recreation and various other forms of organized social effort. All these activities have created the sphere of a new profession, that of the trained social worker. ”

“ The social worker must of course have the same suitability for teaching or nursing or any other of the various tasks that she may undertake as has the teacher or nurse or other person who works under different auspices. She must have in addition a truly altruistic spirit, a deep earnestness which will survive discouragement, and a real insight into the circumstances, handicaps, and possibilities of others. This insight presupposes maturity of thought; and the young girl must serve a long apprenticeship with life before she is at her best as a social worker. ”

“ The social worker is also an essential aid to the [Pg 76] physician in bringing to light the mental torments and errors which result from difficult personal relations within the family. These difficulties can only be understood by one who visits the patient in his home, becomes intimate and friendly with other members of his family, and understands, therefore, the difficulties that may arise from friction, rivalry, jealousy, and temperamental incompatibility within the home. ”

“ It is a matter of common knowledge that those who do not appreciate the difficulty of the doctor’s task and the time required for cures drift from one dispensary to another and try physician after physician in search of one who will treat their troubles as they think they should be treated and give them the relief for which suffering dares not cease to hope. What wonder if a yet greater dissatisfaction is felt with the deliberateness of the social worker. ”

“ These concern the patient's trade, the physical and moral conditions under which he practises it, his fitness or unfitness for it, the wages he receives, the future possibilities of advancement in pay and type of work which it offers. In all of these problems the social worker can sometimes help a little because of her greater freedom of mobility, mental and physical. She is not tied to her task as blindingly, as deafeningly, as the [Pg 63] manual worker is. She may know more or be able to find out more as to labor markets, as to other, possibly better, positions, shops, employers. ”

“ But I wish to make it clear, in closing this chapter, that the social worker as a citizen is as much interested in these hopes for radical economic reforms as any one else can be, though she does not regard them as her special business. ”

“ Welfare departments in stores and factories indicate the growing importance in modern industry of work which has to do with social factors in employment. The trained social worker may find a position as secretary, statistician, visitor, investigator, lecturer, dietitian, nurse, or as a clerk or executive officer, in child welfare, civic improvement, or family relief work. ”

“ She must satisfy the need or put him in contact with others who will. The same is true of social workers employed to give suitable distribution to the benevolence of churches or who investigate for government departments or administer government services. There is abundant evidence that this concern for the individual as such is what is everywhere expected of the social worker. It is a paradox of this modern development of philanthropy that scientific method should have led away from generalization and formula and to a separation of the individual from the category and the predicament. ”

“ There is no logical reason why a social worker should not be active in the service of either or both and yet remain in his calling, as the bricklayer, lawyer, or laborer may.
The labor movement and social revolution and social work are three things of three entirely different kinds. The labor movement is a tide in human affairs. ”

“ Of course, in all such advice we intend to say nothing that we should not wish to have said to ourselves. The social worker tries to treat people always as she would wish to be treated. But one cannot always avoid giving pain or even estrangement. ”

“ Experience has shown that trained social workers actually save the county the cost of their salaries and expenses, without considering the greater efficiency and [Pg 195] permanent value of the work done. The social worker has been well termed a "doctor of domestic difficulties." ”

“ Because of their interest in individual lives, and their constant response to the challenge in every sort of insufficiency and adversity they transcend the ordinary barriers of social provincialism and come to know everywhere those who bear the brunt of the social injury. The social worker seems always to be speaking for someone who has not managed as well as possible for himself, or for whom life has arranged badly, or who is not old enough or strong enough to be his own guardian. ”

“ When the social worker begins the difficult task of acquiring her influence in a family, she starts with a great deal in her favor if she appears in the home as the agent of the physician. He has prestige. By reason of his profession, by reason of the institution which he represents, by reason of confidence already established by him in the patients' friends and neighbors, the new family is ready to have confidence in him. He is not thought to have any axe to grind. He is assumed to be genuine in his desire of helpfulness. ”

“ In cross section no obvious, no easily discernible bond appears among these diverse agencies. An eleemosynary purpose, the first suggestion of most laymen, is indignantly repudiated by the modern social worker and can be, in many cases, categorically disproved. All are benevolent, but so also are educational, religious, artistic and other undertakings not commonly considered social work.
It is a standing rule of science that if you can see nothing crosswise you must try squinting lengthwise. ”

“ Our whole scheme of social work may be regarded, from this standpoint at least, as social politics. But has the social worker, who is the social politician, the same intimate knowledge of his neighborhood that the professional politician possesses? ”

“ It is not because there is no other obvious title to give her that the school visitor is called a social worker but because her responsibility is not to the standards demanded by the school system nor to any subject of instruction but to the child himself and the need of the child in any capacity in which that need may occur. ”

“ The social worker is primarily concerned, not with the lifting of humanity to a higher level, but with eradicating the maladjustments and abnormalities, the needless inequalities, which prevent our realizing our own reasonable standards. ”

“ I wish to make quite clear here my appreciation that good social workers never begin their relationships with a client by assuming a moral fault on his part and never push the economic questionnaire into the first interview. All I wish to point out is that it is perhaps easier for the medical social worker than for others to avoid these blunders. ”

“ It may summon its courage and meet the last charge, the one that seems to make it most uncomfortable, a charge that not only says it bails the sea with a sieve and [Pg 72] locks the door when the horse is out of the stable, but goes farther and ascribes motives—“the social worker is called an apologist for the status quo; he is called a little brother of the rich; he is accused of taking tainted money;” [73] —and why? Because social work continues in what its critics consider “remedial” work instead of addressing itself to wholesale and summary prevention. ”

“ The constant references to programs, standards and experience, to records and the search for causes, the emphasis on prevention and the patient, objective, therapeutic attitude of the social worker all testify to the conquest of the field by science. ”

“ It is this same process of evolution, the same heaping-up of groups till finally they become unmanageable, which has led to the employment of the social worker in other institutions. It is because the schoolmaster must teach so many that he can no longer know his pupils and their families individually that he has to employ the home visitor to keep him better in touch with them. ”

“ In dealing with family difficulties through a "settlement," the social worker becomes impressed with the importance of understanding what legal redress may be obtained for some just grievance, and applies herself to legal study. ”

“ I know these social work fellows and they are a white-livered lot. And the men they try to deal with respect and understand only one thing—strength.”
“But labor doesn’t work through social workers. It’s a force by itself.” ”

“ Often he will solve his own problems with the aid of a little information from one whom he trusts and has talked things out with. But this implies unusual powers of listening on the social worker's part. ”

“ In the mean streets of life, in the hospitals, at the prison gates, in the reformatories, in the dark haunts of poverty, there are social workers striving and toiling and moiling in the service of all these seething masses of human beings. ”

“ A thorough understanding of the two backgrounds involved enabled a social worker to effect a real reconciliation, with the woman's eyes opened to her ungenerous behavior and the man taking steps to improve his education in a night school.
6. Occupational Faults.—Closely allied to the foregoing, and in some respects growing out of it, are the shortcomings on the employment side that contribute to marital instability. Most of these can be referred back to lack of education or opportunity in youth, or to defects of character. ”

“ The official agent of the Board of Health, perhaps feared, certainly not a natural confidant for the family, may easily miss the truth which the social worker unearths, provided always she succeeds in differentiating herself altogether from the impersonal and professional investigator, and gradually becomes in the mind of the family and in truth their friend. ”

“ It may not force us to seek social aid. Yet the lack of a clear idea about where we ought to be working, how we can earn the most money, do the most good, and be happiest—that is a deficiency that none of us is free from. ”

“ Social workers also have to do with food, clothing, shelter, and medical attention, but these are incidental to their main work of adjusting differences which arise in the relations between people, e.g., between school authorities and parents and parents and pupils, between family and community. ”

“ Text-books of sociology which are at once theoretical and practical, aiding alike the citizen who seeks to fulfil intelligently his duty toward the dependent classes and the volunteer or professional worker in any branch of social service, are rare enough ”

“ When I returned from a year in the war zone, five months of which was spent at the front, I looked forward to finding a constructive program, hammered out by the social work group, which would interpret the struggle and give our nation a call to action. I looked to social workers because I have long believed and continue to believe that social workers are the finest group of persons in our American community. ”