LIST OF TABLES 1. Twenty Sources Most Used in Three Cities, in Order of 2. Order of Frequency of Consultation in the Separate Cities of the 20 Sources Most Often Used in the Three Cities 3. Twenty Sources Most Used by Agencies Doing Work with Children, Family Work, and Medical-social Work in First City, in Order of Frequency of Use 4. Use of the 20 Sources Most Used in the First City, by PAGE CHAPTER I BEGINNINGS HOUGH the social worker has won a degree of recognition Tas as being engaged in an occupation useful to the community, he is handicapped by the fact that his public is not alive to the difference between going through the motions of doing things and actually getting them done. "Doing good" was the old phrase for social service. It begged the question, as do also the newer terms, "social service" and "social work"-unless society is really served. We should welcome, therefore, the evident desire of social workers to abandon claims to respect based upon good intentions alone; we should meet halfway their earnest endeavors to subject the processes of their task to critical analysis; and should encourage them to measure their work by the best standards supplied by experience standards which, imperfect now, are being advanced to a point where they can be called professional. The social workers of the United States form a large occupational group. A majority of them are engaged in case work-in work, that is, which has for its immediate aim the betterment of individuals or families, one by one, as distinguished from their betterment in the mass. Mass betterment and individual betterment are interdependent, however, social reform and social case work of necessity progressing together. This fundamental truth will appear repeatedly as the present discussion of social diagnosis advances. 1 Thus, a study made of the social workers in New York City, which does not include those in public departments or public institutions, shows that the private agencies of New York were employing in salaried positions 3,968 social workers in 1915. Of this number, 501 were engaged in "community movements-research and propaganda." The city is headquarters for a large majority of the national social reform movements, which fact accounts for the size of this second figure; in any other city it would be a smaller proportion of the total. All the other social workers counted were dealing with individuals, but some of these-settlements and recreational activities, for example-were giving an unknown proportion of their time to dealing with individuals in groups. Deducting these also, therefore, approximately 2,200, the number remaining, were in social agencies doing case work. See Devine, Edward T., and Van Kleeck, Mary: Positions in Social Work. Pamphlet of the New York School of Philanthropy, 1916. |