Assignment on Case Work

Introduction There was real teaching in the world long before there was a science or art of teaching; there was social case work long before social workers began, not so many years ago, to formulate a few of its principles and methods. Almost as soon as human beings discovered that their relations to one another had ceased to be primitive and simple, they must have found among their fellows a few who had a special gift for smoothing out the tangles in such relations; they must have sought, however informally, the aid of these "straighteners," as Samuel Butler calls them. Some teachers have had this skill, occasionally ministers of religion have had it, and secular judges, and physicians; though at no time has it been the exclusive possession of these four professions or of any one of them. A writer whose stories and tales are too little known says of one of her characters.

Historical development of social case work

As the nation turned away from reform, the other branch of young social work became more prominent. Social case work, representing that part of social work which focused more on the individual, had a vital role throughout the progressive period. Social caseworks’s influence actually began to increase shortly before the 1920’s. World War I provided unique opportunities for social caseworkers to prove the utility of their skills on non-poverty populations. Social work’s prestige was raised through work in war-related activities such as the Red Cross’s Home Service. Caseworkers with the home service ,led by Mary Richmond, applied their skills to problems faced by service men and their families. Physicians, psychiatrists and psychologists working with emotionally disturbed soldiers saw the social worker as a natural ally. They began using caseworkers as specialists in social adjustment. Such vital activities, were outside the profession's traditional constituency of the poor and indigent and opened up new