Human Service History
CHS-252094-04-07FA1
Introduction to Human Services

The profession of social work emerged in the early twentieth century as charitable organizations began employing trained workers rather than relying on volunteers. Pioneers developed two competing approaches for addressing social problems. Mary Richmond, author of Social Diagnosis (1917), is celebrated as a leader of the charity organization movement, while the social settlement movement was epitomized by the work of Jane Addams at Hull-House in Chicago. The profession considers its founding date to be 1898, the year the first social work course was established at the New York School of Philanthropy (now the Columbia University School of Social Work). In 1915, at the National Conference of Charities and Corrections, Abraham Flexner, an educator and expert on professional standards, pronounced that social workers were not professionals, rather they served as mediators between clients and other professionals such as doctors and lawyers. Early social workers took that as a challenge and mobilized workers to produce professional literature, organizations, and a code of ethics.

As June Hopps and Pauline Collins (1995) have noted, the profession of social work responds to wider historical changes, shifting its focus from environmental reform to individual change, as the nation's social climate fluctuates. For example, social workers aimed to radically change institutions and rejected the traditional establishment during the Progressive Era of the 1900s, the depression of the 1930s, and the social unrest of the 1960s. However, in more conservative times, such as the 1920s, 1950s and 1980s, the profession attended to direct service and individual change.

While white Protestant women composed the majority of early social workers, Catholic, Jewish, and African American men and women often formed their own agencies. Segregation laws barred African Americans from white schools of social work, leading African Americans to create Atlanta University School of Social Work. Pioneers like Lawrence Oxley drew from nineteenth-century philosophies of mutual aid and race pride, and the journal Southern Workman provided a forum of discussion for African American social reformers of the early twentieth century.

In the 1920s, social workers debated whether the profession would include caseworkers across a broad range of fields or limit membership to professional elite with high educational standards. The latter position won, and social workers were required to complete masters-level training. Depression-era social workers demanded a federal response to widespread unemployment and poverty. A new political activism was ignited within the profession and the social workers Harry Hopkins and Jane Hoey served in the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, influencing new emergency relief and social security programs.

In 1952, the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) emerged to accredit graduate schools, and by the 1970s, baccalaureate programs were accredited to prepare entry-level professionals. The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) was established in 1955, adopting a code of ethics, and merging seven previously scattered organizations for psychiatric, medical, and group workers. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, organizations such as the National Association of Black Social Workers (1968), Latino Social Workers Organization (1992), and North American Association of Christians in Social Work (1954) evolved to address concerns of various groups.

Entry-level social workers are trained as generalists and are expected to provide service to a broad range of clients, maintain a wide scope of knowledge, and practice a great diversity of skills. Advanced practitioners with graduate-level training may specialize in areas such as clinical, medical, or school social work, as well as planning and development, aging, mental health, or corrections. In the late 1960s and 1970s, states began establishing licensing requirements to legally regulate practice. While all states require some form of licensure, current trends are moving toward "declassification": downgrading requirements for social work in order to employ persons with neither a license nor a degree to do case management and other functions traditionally reserved for social workers.
Support System

The crucial change in attitude began when we admitted we were powerless, that our habit had us whipped. We came to meetings and withdrew from our habit. For some, this meant no sex with themselves or others, including not getting into relationships. For others it meant "drying out" and not having sex with the spouse for a time to recover from lust. We discovered that we could stop, that not feeding the hunger didn't kill us, that sex was indeed optional! There was hope for freedom, and we began to feel alive. Encouraged to continue, we turned more and more away from our isolating obsession with sex and self and turned to God and others. All this was scary. We couldn't see the path ahead, except that others had gone that way before. Each new step of surrender felt it would be off the edge into oblivion, but we took it. And instead of killing us, surrender was killing the obsession! We had stepped into the light, into a whole new way of life.
The fellowship gave us monitoring and support to keep us from being overwhelmed, a safe haven where we could finally face ourselves. Instead of covering our feelings with compulsive sex, we began exposing the roots of our spiritual emptiness and hunger. And the healing began. As we faced our defects, we became willing to change; surrendering them broke the power they had over us. We began to be more comfortable with ourselves and others for the first time without our "drug." Forgiving all who had injured us, and without injuring others, we tried to right our own wrongs. At each amends more of the dreadful load of guilt dropped from our shoulders, until we could lift our heads, look the world in the eye, and stand free. We began practicing a positive sobriety, taking the actions of love to improve our relations with others. We were learning how to give; and the measure we gave was the measure we got back. We were finding what none of the substitutes had ever supplied. We were making the real Connection. We were home.

12 Step System

We admitted that we were powerless over lust -- that our lives had become unmanageable.

Come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

You must admit to God, to us, and to another humans the exact nature of our wrongs.

Be entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

You have to humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.

Make a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

Make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.

Search through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood.

Praying only for knowledge of will give us the power to carry that out the healing.

Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to sexaholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs. The Twelve Steps and Traditions are adapted with permission of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. ("AAWS"). Permission to adapt and reprint the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions does not mean that AAWS has approved the contents, of this publication, or that AAWS agrees with the views expressed herein. AA is a program of recovery from alcoholism only. Use of the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions in connection with programs which are patterned after AA, but which address other problems, or in any other non-AA context, does not imply otherwise.
Should a subordinate in a probation department be recommended for a promotion, or otherwise denied, on the basis of loyalty to the "person" of the boss or being a member of an active "good old boys" clique?

No one should ever be subjected to becoming involved in cliques in order to be recommended for promotion. I see this in the army all the time. People get promoted for the wrong reasons and then when they reach the leadership role they are not prepared to lead. A person should be recommended for promotion according to there professional qualification, not on who they know or hang out with. Any department or organization that conducts this type of promotions will eventually fall victim to inefficiency. They will promote undeserving personnel and the qualified personnel that are over looked and treated unfairly will move on to another department. This will destroy the moral within the department and cause lack of recruitment if it is known that these elements exist. The department that your qualified personnel move to will benefit from your inefficiency and be a more productive department, while your department self destructs with low moral and inefficient work production. The two basic categories of inequality are how criminal justice agencies directly involved with issues of prejudice and discrimination? The two basic qualities of inequality are: Justifiable and unjustifiable. Justifiable inequality refers to unequal treatment that is socially necessary.