Official proceedings of the annual meeting: 1923

334

THE HOME

PROGRESS IN SOCIAL CASE WORK
SOME CHANGES IN SOCIAL CASE WORK
Gordon Hamilton, Charity Organization Society, New York
I cannot do better than to begin this paper with a definition from What Is Social
Case Work? Miss Richmond says: "Social case work consists of those processes which
develop personality through adjustments, consciously effected, individual by individual,
between men and their social environment."
Our common heritage.-In this sense, i.e., the development of personality consciously effected, case work belongs to all who practise it. It is our common heritage
and common tool. What was probably common to the origins of case work fields in the
past was lack of science, lack of resources, a certain roughness of the eye, a <ertain
awkwardness of hand, and a certain objectivity of approach and a certain tendency to
concentrate on the major problem, ignoring the wholeness of the situation; but what
was common, too, was the innate skill of born case workers, getting results in the dawn
of case work that we do not always attain in its high noon. What was common, finally, was loyalty, endurance, fearlessness, and case work intuitions that far outran the
hope of immediate accomplishment. What the pioneers left us was a vision which we,
dazzled today by a multiplicity of resources, almost forget to look at!
The early emphasis.-All social case work, whether children's, family, medical, or
psychiatric, is integrated but in trying to analyze for ourselves, today, some of the
characteristic emphases, I shall more particularly confine myself to the description
of family case work, partly because it is nearer to me and partly because it has special
appropriateness and significance on the day devoted to the home. Dr. Southard said
in the Kingdom of Evils that family case work had pivoted around the question of relief
and that now it would have to pivot around the question of personality. I doubt if
thoughtful case workers of the past were ever hemmed in by the conception of relief,
although relief figured largely in the vocabulary of the last century. What seemed like
preoccupation with relief was one of the early personality studies the case worker
engaged in. Those who think of this relief as something primitive overlook the fact
that fifty years ago this country was served by orphanages and almshouses, where twothirds of the insane were housed. There was little provision for the sick, and there
were no day nurseries or recreational centers. Poor relief was carried on by the police
in doles of wood and coal, or else there was a sea of aimless haphazard almsgiving. In
other words, before early case work we had the institutional poor-relief outlook miles
away from personality. Thirty years ago Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell, a great pioneer,
was saying that the three necessaries were: knowledge of the facts (i.e. objective observation and interpretation); adequate relief for the body. (Anyone who knew Mrs.
Lowell would laugh to have that interpreted except in a roundness of physical treatment); and moral oversight for the soul. (We talk of characterological problems
nowadays. Terminology is a fickle jade.) We can hardly realize today the guesswork and irresponsibility of early philanthropies before the beginnings of case work.
No one had much knowledge of family life, no one had any idea why people needed
help. They had been helping poverty, not people. Mrs. Lowell sounded a clarion call
through the nineties-knowledge of the facts.
What were the facts?-What constituted facts in i88i differed of course from what
we consider facts today. We are more inclined to think in terms of factors-a factor