Social Diagnosis
Social Diagnosis Mary E. Richmond's (1917) scholarly work, Social Diagnosis, is a 511 page comprehensive approach to social work at the beginning of the 20th century. This book provided a systematic framework for social work by formulating questionnaires concerning nearly every aspect of the profession to be used at the initiation of services. The author expressed the specific intent to provide common ground for all case workers so they could "develop a knowledge and mastery of those elements" (p. 5).
While a condensed version of the book is certainly beyond the scope of this paper, a brief summary is in order. Two appendices, a bibliography and a thorough index supplement the book's twenty-eight chapters. Richmond divided the book into three parts. Part one is concerned with the history of social work investigation and discusses how workers gather the information used to decide to whom services should be dispensed, part two discusses the process of interviewing applicants, gathering information from other sources, and how to think through the information gathered in these processes to reach conclusions about client eligibility and planning. It also begins to address the philosophical basis of social work. Richmond (1917) said:
Individual differences must be reckoned with in every field of endeavor, but the theory of the wider self, though it has of course other implications, seems to lie at the base of social casework. We have seen how slowly such work has abandoned its few general classifications and tried instead to consider the whole man. Even more slowly is it realizing that the mind of man (and in a very real sense the mind is the man) can be described as the sum of his social relationships. (p. 368)
In part three, questionnaires are introduced with discussions on their appropriate use. There are questionnaires and chapters for (a) families in general, (b) immigrant families, (c) deserted families, (d) neglected children, (e) single mothers, (f)
While a condensed version of the book is certainly beyond the scope of this paper, a brief summary is in order. Two appendices, a bibliography and a thorough index supplement the book's twenty-eight chapters. Richmond divided the book into three parts. Part one is concerned with the history of social work investigation and discusses how workers gather the information used to decide to whom services should be dispensed, part two discusses the process of interviewing applicants, gathering information from other sources, and how to think through the information gathered in these processes to reach conclusions about client eligibility and planning. It also begins to address the philosophical basis of social work. Richmond (1917) said:
Individual differences must be reckoned with in every field of endeavor, but the theory of the wider self, though it has of course other implications, seems to lie at the base of social casework. We have seen how slowly such work has abandoned its few general classifications and tried instead to consider the whole man. Even more slowly is it realizing that the mind of man (and in a very real sense the mind is the man) can be described as the sum of his social relationships. (p. 368)
In part three, questionnaires are introduced with discussions on their appropriate use. There are questionnaires and chapters for (a) families in general, (b) immigrant families, (c) deserted families, (d) neglected children, (e) single mothers, (f)