2.2.2 Manejo de Residuos Sólidos.
3.1. Criterios e indicadores de sostenibilidad medioambiental.
The social worker had at various points during the Conference been called the handmaid, agent, and conscience of society; the client’s representative, mediator, and champion; a liaison, link, and channel between the client and the specialist, an
enlightener and educator of public opinion, and by implication a moral example – A
comment from the discussion groups at a 1959 conference on moral issues in social work.1
I Introduction
In the landscape of post-war England, social work may been characterised by its location in the gaps and on the margins of the welfare state, but its function in this position was still open to debate. The opening quote, taken from a 1959 conference on the moral issues facing the social worker, shows that there was no shortage of suggestions. The profession had been included as part of the statutory welfare structures almost as an afterthought, and social workers found themselves having to carve a niche amongst the more established branches of the social and medical services, in the gaps left in provision by welfare legislation.2 Even if the specific roles of the various specialist branches of social work were often similar to those in the interwar period, and clearly demarcated by the professions around them, the
1 ‘Reports from the Discussion Groups’, Morals and the Social Worker, A Report of the Conference
September 18th – 20th, 1959 (London, 1959), p. 56.
2 Harris, ‘State Social Work: Constructing the Present from Moments in the Past’, p. 51; Todd,
‘Family Welfare and Social Work in Post-War, c. 1948- c. 1970’, p. 366; Hennessy, Having It So Good: Britain in the Fifties, p. 23.
search for a unifying identity for social workers, what Lady Cynthia Coleville labelled the ‘umbrella of common purpose’, remained a central concern.3 My focus
in this chapter is the collection of roles which constituted this collective identity, and although it shall be necessary to consider some of the more specialised functions of particular forms of social work, my interest in this chapter is nevertheless the tasks and skills which were felt to be shared, more or less, across the profession.4 This has two purposes. The first is to sketch out the role of social work in order to lay the foundations for some of the later discussions in the thesis. The particular
responsibilities and attitudes of social workers will be revisited throughout the coming chapters. The second, more pressing purpose is to consider how the case of social work helps to illuminate our understanding of the welfare state. Since social work was only added as an afterthought, it had to position itself in relation to the existing services and structures, so the functions which it came to perform give us a new insight into the nature of post-war welfare, and especially its gaps and
deficiencies in its first few decades.
Such an objective places this chapter firmly in the historiographical discussions over the post-war settlements. As I indicated in the introduction, this concept, and the consensus which it implies, has been roundly criticised and re- thought. This has led Gordon Hughes to label the post-war settlements as ‘a
3 ASW, The Social Worker and the Group Approach, A Report of the Conference, 28th – 29th May,
1954 (Wallington, 1954), p. 3. Lady Cynthia Colville was at this time the President of the Association of Social Workers.
4 For descriptions of the roles of specific social workers, see: MRC, ASW, MSS.378/ASW/B/8/2/1,
Publications, A survey of the conditions of service of social workers in the constituent organisations of the Federation, undated, [1939]; Cherry Morris (ed.), Social Case-Work in Great Britain (London, [1950]); Great Britain Central Office of Information, Social Work and the Social Worker in Britain;
Report of the Working Party on Social Workers in the Local Authority Health and Welfare Services;
Noel Timms, Social Casework, Principles and Practice (London, 1964), pp. 96-236; Alan Hancock
and Phyllis Willmott (eds), The Social Workers (London, 1965); Report of the Committee on Local Authority and Allied Personal Social Services, Cm. 3703; Younghusband, Social Work in Britain, 1950-1975: A Follow-Up Study, Vol. 1, pp. 36-217.
complex, contested and fragile set of arrangements’ within which compromises could take place,5 and it was, I shall argue, these complexities and fragilities which
social work sought to address. It has become clear that the post-war settlements were indeed incomplete and contradictory, but the practical ramifications of this have received less attention.6 Social work was, I argue, a solution to many of the problems which arose from the tension between the ideal of a comprehensive welfare system and the fragmented, sometimes labyrinthe structures which were the reality.
Two particular approaches taken to the post-war settlement are especially pertinent to this chapter, and it is these which form the basis for my consideration of social work’s welfare roles. The first is the notion of an organisational settlement, as identified by Janet Newman and John Clarke in their text of 1997, The Managerial
State.7 Newman and Clarke posit two spheres within the construction and operation
of the welfare state: professionalism, which ‘promised disinterested service’, and bureaucratic administration, which ‘promised impersonal fairness’.8 Social work
existed in the gaps between these two spheres, and as much as social workers strove to be recognised as professionals in their own right, it was nevertheless a
professionalism based upon supporting (and receiving the approval) of other
professions. Social work’s efforts to help clients access other welfare professionals, and to enable communities, families, and individuals to address their own social issues, had a clear foundation in bureaucracy and administration. Literature within
5 Hughes, ‘‘Picking over the Remains’: the Welfare State Settlements of the Post-Second World War
UK’, p. 4.
6 Thomson, Lost Freedom, pp. 79-80.
7 Clarke and Newman, The Managerial State, passim., but esp. p. 4. 8 Clarke and Newman, The Managerial State, p. 7.
social work has already identified this curious position, characterising social work as an example of ‘bureau-professionalism’.9
The second approach is Mathew Thomson’s allusion to ‘an emotional and social dimension to the post-war settlement’.10 In his own work, this pertains to issues such as psychological well-being and the welfare of children, but it also points to a wider issue of the experience of welfare. There were certain emotional and social issues which arose or continued within the welfare state, and social workers were part of efforts to alleviate these problems. In addition, we need to be aware of the symbolic importance of welfare provision and welfare work. This is a subject which represents an underexplored yet significant issue for the historiography,11 and where James Vernon’s work on, for example, memories of the ‘hungry thirties’ in the welfare state has offered some direction.12 As a personal social service, social
work was concerned as much with how people felt about their individual and social circumstances as with the reality of their situation. As we shall see in the next chapter, this was a period when social workers focused on the therapeutic aspects of their role, and where their social and political responsibilities were frequently an extension of their welfare work.
One of the themes which unites these two approaches to the post-war settlement is the magnitude of the welfare state. For clients unsure how to proceed,
9 ‘Bureau-profesisonalism’ is a central term in: Parry and Parry, ‘Social work, professionalism and the
state’, pp. 21-47. It has also been utilised in: Hughes, ‘‘Picking over the Remains’: the Welfare State Settlements of the Post-Second World War UK’, pp. 32-33; John Harris, ‘State Social Work and Social Citizenship in Britain: From Clientelism to Consumerism’, British Journal of Social Work, 29.6 (1999), pp. 918-920.
10 Thomson, Lost Freedom, p. 13. For a similar formulation regarding children, see: Webb, ‘A Certain
Moment: Some Personal Reflections on Aspects of Residential Childcare in the 1950s’, p. 1393.
11 Thompson, ‘Introduction’, p. 17.
12 James Vernon, Hunger: A Modern History (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2007), pp. 236-271.
Lynn Frogett, despite writing from the very different viewpoint of social policy and psychoanalysis, has done similar work on the emotional value of welfare. See: Lynn Frogget, Love, Hate and Welfare. Psychosocial Approaches to Policy and Practice (Bristol, 2002), esp. pp. 49-63.
the social and medical services could constitute an intimidating structure. To an extent, it was the role of professions like social work to address this, and social workers could alleviate the effects of professional specialisation by considering the client as a whole, and could act to personalise what were frequently impersonal administrative and bureaucratic structures. In this way, they sought to resolve some of the emotional and social issues which the post-war settlement not only failed to cover, but sometimes caused. This was not just, we should note, for the benefit of the clients. The gaps in provision, knowledge, and culture which were evident
throughout the welfare state could also affect the performance of the professionals who worked within it, so the intervention of social workers could also be valuable in facilitating good practice. With both clients and fellow professionals, social workers could help to provide, or at least to give the impression, of a joined-up service, even when the social and political context in which welfare was provided and experienced was tense with contradictions.
I.i Discussions of the Social Work Role
It is worth noting, as Eileen Younghusband did in her analysis of the period, that social work engaged in a great deal of introspection during the post-war decades.13 Discussions amongst social workers and their welfare colleagues about the role of the profession and its practitioners occurred throughout the period, so that although some particular roles were more prevalent or more widely-discussed at certain points, they were ongoing debates. Nevertheless, there were particular conferences, texts, and pieces of legislation which especially sparked debates on the place of the
social worker. There were noticeable points, then, when discussions of the social work role became particularly heated, when disparate conversations were brought together in the same conference hall or the same journal pages. Although I attempt to infer how these debates evolved over the period, the spread of the materials means that we can say more about some years than others. Nevertheless, the question of what the place of social work can tell us about the welfare state and its social context remains central.
I should also note that this is by no means the first study of the role which social workers found in the welfare state and in society. As I discussed in the introduction, much of the existing historiography on social work has focused on issues of professionalisation, and part of that analysis has involved an interrogation of the functions which social workers performed.14 The fact that this research was
focused on questions of professional status has, however, meant that the wider social context of social work has often been neglected. Even those accounts which begin with broader issues of post-war welfare politics and culture have often stopped short of expansive discussions of social work because of its peripheral status.15 It is, however, this very status which makes social work such an informative case-study. The chapter which follows seeks, therefore, to address questions which have been frequently discussed before, but to do so in greater depth, and with an eye to both the specific details of social work and the broader social, cultural, and political shifts which shaped the profession’s role in post-war England.
14 Examples include: Pierson, Understanding Social Work: History and Context; Powell, The Politics
of Social Work; Younghusband, The Newest Profession: A Short History of Social Work; Cree, From Public Streets to Private Lives; Sapsford, ‘Understanding People: The Growth of an Expertise’, pp.
23-46.
The professional introspection to which Younghusband alluded also involved debates about why certain roles evolved, the purpose they served, and how they might need modification. Some commentators noted that certain issues reflected wider social issues, and that social workers, by providing temporary solutions rather than wider structural change, were neglecting their duties: this is a theme covered in the next chapter, on the political context of social work. Nevertheless, it is important to note that the roles discussed in this chapter were consistently under discussion and in flux.
I.ii Expanding and Combining Social Work Roles
As social workers gained further influence, they found and reported further issues amenable to their intervention, a phenomenon which has been described by Harold Perkin as characteristic of the rise of professionalism and expertise within British society since 1880. Recognising social work’s use of this ‘feedback principle’ is crucial to our understanding of their role in the welfare state and in society, not least because a number of the tasks which they took on were interlinked. If some of the roles which I describe seem contingent on or precipitated by others, then this is part of the manner by which social work, and a multitude of other professions, gained prominence in society.16 An excellent example of this was the growing opportunity afforded social workers to determine the needs of clients, since, as Mary Langan has argued, once social workers were ‘given powers to assess need – whether for
community care provision, compulsory psychiatric admission, or for child protection
intervention’, they soon ‘acquired new status as professionals.’17 Some roles allowed
more purchase than others, and the profession was not unaware of this, with
probation worker Joan King describing at a 1969 conference the increasing suspicion that social workers were ‘inventing new needs to justify their own existence.’18
The six roles which I will discuss were not discrete functions, and some descriptions of the social worker’s task incorporated two or more of them. This is a point which will be reiterated in the chapter on social work methods, where I argue that distinguishing between different methods and methodologies (that is,
psychological and sociological ways of viewing society and individuals) is a futile task, since social workers actively sought to deploy a pragmatic mixture of the tools available to them. Some of these roles were more prevalent than others, and some were tied to specific specialisms within social work. As we shall see, some aspects of these roles were deeply practical, whilst others were of a more metaphorical nature: moreover, social workers actively embraced and highlighted some elements of their professional territory, whilst remaining quieter about other responsibilities.
Furthermore, some of the roles which I will describe were also factors in the social and political functions which the profession came to perform, such as social work’s relationship with social change. Other roles were, in theory at least, part of social workers’ cooperation and coordination with other groups (professional and otherwise) in the welfare state. One of the aims of this chapter is to describe these roles so that they can be problematised later (and problematised they will be). Of these six roles, two were explicitly related to the nature of the welfare state. The first
17 Mary Langan, ‘The Contested Concept of Need’, in Mary Langan (ed.), Welfare: Needs, Rights and
Risks (London and New York, 1998), p. 10. See also: Deborah Cohen, Family Secrets. Shame and Privacy in Modern Britain (Oxford, 2013), p. 223.
18 Joan King, ‘First Things First’, in ASW, New Thinking About Welfare – Values and Priorities
was promoting the well-being of clients, which might involve helping them draw on their own individual capacities or marshalling the local resources of the community and the family. The second role which social workers performed within the welfare state was that of guidance. This involved directing clients to and through the relevant and available social and medical services, but also helping different groups in the welfare state to understand each other by interpreting different languages,
expectations, and views. They were, respectively, reflections of social work’s professional identity and its bureaucratic contribution.
We also examine the symbolic value of social work, principally its role as the ‘conscience of society’ and as a particular form of authority. Both these functions straddled the role of social work within the welfare state and within society; they are included in this chapter because they were a particular solution to the presence of a personalised service within a collective welfare system. The remaining two
functions, where social work offered practical aid and assistance and acted as moral and civil examples towards their clients, were continuations of former roles,
although they took on new significance within the context of the welfare state. We start with perhaps the most prominent post-war role for social work, that of
promoting well-being and enabling adjustment.
II Promoting Well-Being and Enabling Adjustment
All branches of social work had an interest in the well-being of their clients. Although social work was influenced by the diagnostic medical model during this period, whereby practitioners attempted to identify and isolate and then treat specific
maladies, rather than enacting broader social or structural change,19 the profession was nevertheless characterised by the significance it placed on overall welfare.20
Even when social workers were concerned with a particular client group or with a specific element of their clients’ lives, they usually emphasised holistic approaches. Child care officers worked with the family or the relevant institution as a whole, even when their primary focus was the welfare of the child, while psychiatric social workers were more focused on the material and environmental well-being of their clients than other professions based in mental health. The holism which characterised social work,21 as well as the specific ways in which social workers attempted to ensure the physical, psychological, and social well-being of their clients, was at the heart of a number of discussions about the role of the profession.
When the welfare state emerged, social workers noted that their profession had recently expanded to focus on the individual as a whole, partly as a result of the influence of psychoanalysis on casework.22 Over the course of the period, social workers would also emphasise the importance of the profession’s emphasis on the whole of the family or the whole of the community.23 In fact, they viewed this as
19 Margaret Yelloly, Social Work Theory and Psychoanalysis (Wokingham et al., 1980), p. 133;
Langan, ‘The Contested Concept of Need’, pp. 9-10. On the limitations of understanding social work