SOCIAL WORK GROUP.

This section provides an overview of several reports on the social work presented during the conference of the British Sociological Association in 1957. In her paper, The Development of Professional Social Work and its Place in the Welfare State, Una Cormack began by tracing the history of social work. She argued that social work as we know it was a response to problems posed by the industrial revolution. By the end of the last century the principles, and some of the skills and attitudes typical of modern social work were already widely accepted. But at the turn of the century a rift appeared between social work and social reform. As a result, many social services developed without any effective participation by social workers, and for many years social work was handicapped by its alienation from the main streams of thought and action. Some discussed social work in terms of social functions and professional roles, others in terms of occupational categories and the services within which social workers are employed, and others in terms of the skills and attitudes held to typify the professional social worker. Much of the discussion that followed was concerned with problems of status within the social services.