A contemporary history of social work

her position made her the obvious choice for the government to lead a working
party examining the role of social workers in local government.

Where did social workers work in local government?

Research for the report on social work in local government (Younghusband,
1959) had found 89% of social workers to be untrained. Although the major
reforms following the Beveridge report were designed to address need in all its
manifestations, those actually providing the services relied on common sense,
compassion and their personal experience to offer assistance. The report has a
curious list of those staff regarded as social workers by local authorities:

• officers responsible to the council for welfare services or their

administration;
• officers employed as welfare officers or mental welfare officers;
• administrative officers with some social work functions, many of
whom were visiting officers;
• workers with the blind;
• workers with the deaf;
• workers with the general classes of handicapped persons including
occupational therapists and craft instructors;
• psychiatric social workers;
• almoners registered with the Institute of Almoners;
• workers with families including ‘problem’ families;
• home help organisers and deputies;
• staff of residential accommodation;
• visitors to residential accommodation;
• occupation centre staff;
• nursing staff including health visitors;
• some staff who could not be grouped under these headings.
(Younghusband, 1959, para 320)

Like all surveys, the degree of knowledge held by the respondent can skew the
response, but it is startling to find such a diverse grouping regarded as social workers.
That confusion endured for many years until the title ‘social worker’ achieved
statutory protection 45 years after the working party reported. Significantly, the
work of the Children’s Officer and childcare officers, albeit located within local
authorities, was not covered by the terms of reference of the working party.
Services had grown to meet the needs of particular groups, leading to
administrative responses to need, but Younghusband proposed a ‘general purpose
social worker’, a National Council for Social Work Training and a major expansion
of training.
The Younghusband report led to the establishment of two-year courses in
further education colleges leading to a professional qualification. There was

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Social work’s ambivalence about professionalism

inevitably a trade-off between quality and quantity. Many existing social workers
had reservations about the dilution of standards. The Institute of Medical Social
Workers and the Association of Psychiatric Social Workers were firmly allied
to this position but the demand for trained staff was such that the new courses
found a ready market.

What did social workers learn?

Social casework became the core content for courses encouraging reflection and
analysis of individuals in their social and environmental context. This was not
‘a kind of second best psychotherapy’ (Younghusband, 1978), but an approach
rooted in reality. American textbooks by authors like Perlman (1957), Hollis
(1964), Biestek (1961) and Bartlett (1970) were influential in helping a generation
discover the doubtful joys of process recording (a method of recording interviews
in detail that analyses motivation and significant interpersonal transactions
between interviewer and interviewee). But this emphasis on the interpersonal was
balanced by increased awareness of social and environmental factors. The studies
Family and kinship in East London (Young and Willmott, 1959) and Growing up in
the city (Mays, 1959) helped students to locate problems in their social context.
The work of Peter Townsend on the elderly (Townsend, 1959; Townsend and
Wedderburn, 1965) and later on poverty exposed the all-embracing welfare state
as something of a myth by demonstrating the grim conditions in which many
older people lived their last days, with the legacy of the workhouse still present
in both buildings and attitudes.
The distinguished sociologist Barbara Wootton contributed to a more rounded
view of social work in a trenchant critique (Wootton, 1959) in which she laid
into the pretensions of social casework, the fuzziness of its language and the lack
of evidence for its efficacy. The quest for rigour and demonstrable outcomes
has been a consistent theme over the past 40 years but evidence of effectiveness
remains limited.
The great growth in social work training courses began in the 1960s. One-
year applied social studies courses based on the Carnegie model developed in
the early years of the decade, but these were only available for graduates in social
studies. Others with non-relevant degrees had to take one-year diploma in social
administration before going on the applied course. The two were eventually
integrated in 17-month courses (later extended to two years) combining
professional training with academic studies. Only the placements differentiated
the professional settings for which the graduates from these programmes would
be qualified.
What was the core content of these evolving courses? Academically, the
parameters were fairly clear – an understanding of social administration and
social policy, sociology , psychology, human growth and development including
health, disease and disability, and the legal framework, with only cursory attention
to substance misuse and domestic violence, which were viewed as fringe issues.

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A contemporary history of social work

Sadly, this list excludes research and social work has been held back by the lack of
a research orientation among its practitioners compared with health professions.
The fieldwork element of the programmes evolved from the early days of
learning by ‘sitting with Nelly’ and thus picking up an understanding of the
administrative requirements of the agency coupled with sterile visits of observation.
It was based on the recognition that, as the Younghusband report said, ‘we
regard field teaching, based upon actual responsibility for a small case load as of
equal importance with theoretical study in all forms of training for social work’
(Younghusband, 1959, p 251). Then, as now, resources were stretched and it was
difficult to persuade agencies under pressure to free up time for good-quality
supervision. Student units were created in many agencies as a partial solution.

Expansion and the drive to unity

Gradually, the proportion of social workers who were trained grew, albeit
continuing to lag behind the demand for trained staff in all settings. All the social
work professions were expanding rapidly, but the generic base to training that
had resulted from the earlier Carnegie courses became a driving force towards
unity in the professions. The Standing Conference of Organisations of Social
Workers (SCOSW) was established in 1963 to give effect to that sense of unity
and achieved a quick win in today’s management language.
Entry into social work required prospective students to know which profession
they wanted to join.Younghusband comments:

People sought information from university appointments officers,

individual staff members, the training councils, National or local
Councils of Social Services, local probation services, children’s
departments, CABs, social workers and anyone else who seemed able
to give it. (Younghusband, 1978, p 91)

In 1963, soon after SCOSW came into being, a joint working party was
established with the National Institute for Social Work Training, itself only two
years old, to tackle the wasteful confusion and proliferation of advice. All major
interests were consulted and four years later the Social Work Advisory Service
(SWAS) was established in London. It acted as a clearing house for all enquiries
about training and career prospects, produced information leaflets, and collated
information about every aspect of social work and training. After an initial grant
from the Gulbenkian Foundation, SWAS was publicly financed by 1970 until its
functions were absorbed into the Central Council for Education and Training
in Social Work in 1974.
Despite the establishment of SCOSW and its early success in securing the
unified advice service SWAS, the road to unity proved tortuous.The constituent
associations were in very different places.The Institute of Medical Social Workers
(IMSW) had in 1964 recognised the base of its work in its title, abandoning the

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Social work’s ambivalence about professionalism

historic and universally recognised title Almoner. It was relatively well endowed
and it controlled its own training course. The Association of Psychiatric Social
Workers (APSW), while not itself training students, exercised considerable control
over training and in particular the quality of fieldwork placements.The Association
of Child Care Officers was the most politically attuned of the associations, owing
much to the leadership of Tom White, who chaired its Parliamentary and Public
Relations Committee.The Association of Social Workers, the Association of Moral
Welfare Workers, the Society of Mental Welfare Officers and the Association of
Family Caseworkers were smaller associations within SCOSW. The National
Association of Probation Officers was also an active member of SCOSW.
The initial discussion paper produced by SCOSW canvassed two options – a
federation that would take over common interests but leave the constituent bodies
to carry on their specialist function, or the formation of a new national association
for social workers. It swiftly became clear that the momentum lay with the more
radical option of a new national association.
There were many obstacles to be overcome. Many of the older members in
both IMSW and APSW were reluctant to give up their privileged position and
tortuous negotiations took place. As Terry Cooper writes, ‘some members of
SCOSW were very reluctant, as they saw it, to give up access to the accumulated
knowledge and sources of support they possessed, for an uncertain future in a
large amorphous body’ (Cooper, 2012). But of the members of SCOSW, only
one, the National Association of Probation Officers (NAPO), decided not to join
the new association.
At the time, I was working as a probation officer and voted with the minority
in the ballot in 1970 that decided that NAPO would remain independent.There
were two factors in the decision – one explicit and one implicit. Explicitly,
probation officers shared the fear of loss of identity within a larger body, a fear
accentuated by developments in Scotland where the White Paper Social work
in the community (Scottish Home and Health Department/Scottish Education
Department, 1966) proposed the integration of probation in generic social work
departments – a recommendation clearly supported by the Seebohm Committee
(Seebohm, 1968) albeit excluded from its terms of reference. The implicit issue
was one of gender. Alone among the associations, NAPO was predominantly
male. Probation officers’ self-image was one of decisiveness and working in an
environment where the control functions were as important as care.The long-term
consequences of probation’s assertion of independence are explored in Chapter
Seven. But without NAPO, the British Association of Social Workers (BASW)
came into being in 1971.

A professional association without a profession?

Despite the establishment of a strong professional association, had social work truly
become a profession at this time? The hallmarks of a profession are expert and
specialised knowledge, tested and recognised education prior to practice, integrity

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A contemporary history of social work

and impartiality, high standards of conduct, behaviour and attitudes to those using
the service of the professional, and a code of ethics or professional conduct.
Social work had a code of ethics. BASW may have had only a minority of
social workers in membership, but its code was widely accepted as the basis
for professional practice. There was a recognised qualification prior to practice,
although many in practice remained unqualified for several years. There were
clear standards of integrity and impartiality, although the latter was subsequently
redefined in terms of anti-discriminatory practice and anti-oppressive practice.
Even BASW’s code of ethics inadvertently acknowledged the weakest element of
the criteria for a profession by using the word growing: ‘social work has developed
methods of practice which rely on a growing body of systematic knowledge and
experience’ (BASW, 1975).
Certainly, knowledge derived from psychology and sociology had increased in
relevance and application, but the existence of a systematic body of knowledge
was itself challenged. In its evidence to the Barclay Committee reviewing the
role and tasks of social workers, the National Association of Local Government
Officers (NALGO) asserted that there was no generally recognised body of skill
and knowledge that distinguished social work from other occupations.
There is a recognisable and shared body of knowledge, but it is predominantly
secondary knowledge from studies carried out for other disciplines. Only in the
past decade has social work begun to develop a strong research culture.That lack of
rigorous testing of knowledge and its application has contributed to the problem
of defining social work and its boundaries. This was reflected in the problems of
the newly established social services departments in the lack of any boundaries
to the needs they attempted to meet.
If social services departments were struggling to deal with the pace of change,
their struggle was mirrored in the professional association. Under the leadership
of Kenneth Brill, an experienced and successful Children’s Officer (Bamford,
1997), BASW early in its life took the fateful decision to move its headquarters
from London to Birmingham. This was motivated by considerations of cost,
as London weighting had been payable to staff in the capital, and the move
meant substantial savings both on salaries and other staff costs. Finance was an
early concern as membership of the association had not increased as rapidly as
anticipated.The move, however, meant that the association was physically distant
from government ministries, the Central Council for Education and Training in
Social Work and the national press. While it endeavoured to keep a high profile,
it was adversely affected by the move.
Why did BASW’s membership fail to expand at a time of unprecedented growth
in the numbers of social workers? First, those with affiliations to the former
constituent organisations felt that the new body was muted in the expression of
the concerns and issues it had previously discussed. BASW attempted to address
this issue through sections on general health, mental health, child and family care
and treatment of offenders, but without ever achieving the clear sense of identity
it had enjoyed formerly in specialist associations. Second, the turmoil in the new

26
Social work’s ambivalence about professionalism

departments meant that organisational issues rather than professional concerns

were paramount considerations for staff. Third, BASW had no real influence on
salaries and conditions of service, despite having a strong committee with that
title (with a future Labour chief whip, a future local authority chief executive and
two future directors of social services in its membership). Its relationship with
NALGO was tenuous, with NALGO reluctant to concede any special relationship
to BASW. Fourth, BASW itself was attacked as an elitist, professional closed-shop
organisation catering only to the narrow group of qualified social workers.
To understand this last strand, it is important to recall the political context of
the time. Britain was experiencing unprecedented levels of inflation, with five
years in the 1970s recording double-figure increases.The three-day week imposed
to combat the miners’ strike in 1973 led to austerity and hardship. The Heath
government narrowly lost the general election called on the ‘who rules Britain’
platform, to be succeeded by a weak minority government led by Harold Wilson.
And with a ballooning balance of payments deficit, the International Monetary
Fund imposed strict conditions on public spending. Anthony Crosland told a local
government conference in 1975 ‘the party’s over’, and this heralded a period of
severe constraint on public expenditure that hit social services particularly heavily
after their rapid growth.
Social work was divided between those who saw their task as to minimise the
impact of the social stress and financial pressures on clients and those who saw a
wider political role for social work in campaigning for change, forging alliances
with trade unions and user groups, and using their direct experience to bring
about change.The latter group saw social work itself as reinforcing the status quo
by operating as a form of social control.
Chapter Six considers the development of radical social work and its impact on
current practice, but this chapter is geared to noting the professional arguments
raging in the 1970s.

The multi-purpose social worker

Achieving the vision set out by Seebohm required leadership of a high order.
Those newly appointed as directors had to shed their previous allegiance to a
particular service or client group and take a broader strategic view. Not all were
able to do so. Their problems were exacerbated by a number of factors.
The hectic growth referred to earlier meant major increases in staffing and
new developments each year. Growth would normally be welcome, but, coupled
with the scale of the reorganisation task, it proved difficult to manage. New jobs
appeared each month with the result that competent (sometimes half-competent)
managers moved swiftly on to another appointment without consolidating
anything in their previous post.
Workload, too, increased dramatically as the determined attempt to implement
and publicise an open-door policy fuelled demand for services. There were new
legislative requirements in relation to children in trouble, the chronically sick

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A contemporary history of social work

and disabled persons, playgroups, childminding and adoption, which added to

the demand pressures.
The strategic role envisaged by Seebohm for social services in leading social
planning for the community meant that the department was required to forge
closer relationships with housing, education and health than had existed previously.
But the greatest confusion stemmed from the attempt to match a single
department with a single all-purpose social worker. This faithfully reflected the
recommendation of the Seebohm report that one social worker dealing with the
problems of one family would replace the fragmentation by age and client group
that prevailed in the 1960s. The single worker was expected not only to span all
the needs in the family, but to use a diversity of methods:

Different divisions between methods of social work are as artificial as

the difference between different forms of social casework … in his
daily work the social worker needs all these methods to enable him
to respond appropriately to social problems which involve individual,
family group and community aspects. (Seebohm, 1968, p 172)

This was too great a step for social workers, many of whom were untrained, who
found themselves grappling with unknown legislation and unfamiliar groups
of clients. The bold vision and unbounded ambition outran the reality of daily
practice.There was a recurrent debate about the respective claims of, on the one
hand, a geographically defined local service meeting all needs presented within
that locality, and, on the other hand, a specialist service meeting similar needs
across a much wider geographical area.
Specialisation was often the result of pressure from frontline staff.As early as 1978,
the BASW annual general meeting passed a resolution expressing dissatisfaction
with the management and organisation of local authority social service structures.
The range of knowledge and skills required was too great for any individual
practitioner. Dealing with a mental health emergency required detailed knowledge
of the legislation as did a childcare emergency, but the statutory provisions were
very different. Keeping up to date with research findings and changes in laws and
regulations was demanding. It can be argued that GPs manage a similarly broad
spread of knowledge, but they are at an advantage in that their training is much
longer and academically more rigorous. In addition, their salaries are three times
greater and they have ready access to the specialist knowledge of consultants.
Child protection was the forerunner of specialism, building on a model of
specialist teams developed by the NSPCC. It was swiftly followed by other
developments within the childcare field, with adoption and fostering teams and
intermediate treatment teams working with children at risk.
Challis and Ferlie (1987) carried out a major national study of fieldwork in
the mid-1980s that showed that nearly 29% of fieldworkers were in specialist
roles. When changes in progress or planned were included, the trend was more
marked, with significant shifts to formal specialisation. Informal specialisation

28
Social work’s ambivalence about professionalism

was also evident, with 70% of fieldworkers showing over three quarters of their
caseload drawn from a single care group – children, old people and disabled
people or mental health.
The other tension in discussion about how fieldwork teams should be organised
was about the role of social work assistants or social services officers – those
working in social care who did not have a professional qualification. In truth,
only one in seven of the staff of social services departments was a social worker,
although they were regarded as the dominant profession and the majority of
directors came from a social work background.
In their analysis of fieldwork teams, Parsloe and Stevenson (1977) found that
what distinguished the qualified from the unqualified was less evident in relation
to the tasks performed than it was in relation to the client groups served. Social
work assistants frequently carried a caseload of elderly and disabled clients.Work
with elderly people was seen as more straightforward and practical (an ageist
assumption that, although it can be challenged, still reflects the reality of everyday
practice in social care).
This split was mirrored in professional training, with the development from 1977
of the Certificate in Social Service designed to provide a qualification for those
working other than in social work roles. Social work education is considered in
Chapter Five, but its development has mirrored the tensions within the profession
both about its role and its status.

The social work strike of 1979

The tensions within social work about its role were demonstrated by the social
workers’ strike in 1979. The strike was not a coordinated national stoppage. Its
genesis lay in discontent with the derisory levels of pay for night and weekend
cover, a task that had been rendered far more difficult by the proliferating
responsibilities of the social worker in the social services departments. NALGO and
the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) – the two largest public sector
unions – were pressing for improvements in these out-of-hours arrangements but
also for salary increases and regrading. In total, only 15 out of 143 local authorities
in England went on strike, but the impact on social work and its standing was
profound. The strike itself was divisive, rarely attracting 100% support even in
those areas that had called a strike. It raised ethical issues about the impact of
the strike on vulnerable individuals. In most areas, some exceptions were made
for cases where inaction might threaten the safety of clients even if this lessened
the immediate impact of the stoppage. NALGO nationally supported the strikes
with strike pay, but even in the ‘winter of discontent’ when other public service
workers (predominantly members of NUPE, NALGO’s rival) were on strike, the
official trade union attitude was less than whole-hearted in its support.
Eventually, a settlement was reached, with some improvements in standby
allowances, a commitment to improved training and the introduction of a grading
system for social workers that was presented as the beginnings of a career grade

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A contemporary history of social work

to keep good workers in practice. Those social workers who had not been on
strike benefited from these changes.
The strike changed public perception of social work. First, social workers who
hitherto had been generally regarded positively (although the Colwell case, dealt
with in Chapter Three, showed the level of anger that could be generated by
perceived incompetence) had become just another group of public service workers
using the same tactics as other groups. Second, by putting vulnerable people
potentially at risk, they were viewed as betraying their ethical responsibilities.
Third and most damaging of all was the lack of any visible impact from the
strike, inevitably raising the issue of whether social workers fulfilled any useful
function in society.
An official report into the impact of the strike (DHSS, 1980) in one London
borough, Tower Hamlets, where the strike lasted for nine months, concluded
that ‘the weight of opinion presented to us indicated that many did suffer, and
in the main these were the most vulnerable and less articulate members of the
community’.This latter comment may help to explain the lack of visible impact.
Beasley’s personal account of the strike and the divisions it generated within
NALGO, the local government union, pointed the finger at ‘the social workers
… in the forefront of the strike are supporters of the extreme left i.e. the Marxist
wing of the Labour Party, Communist Party, International Marxist Group, Socialist
Workers Party and the Workers Revolutionary Party’ (Beasley, 1986, p 19).
The strike was damaging to social work and full-scale industrial action has rarely
been used in the field since 1979. With the ‘winter of discontent’, it played into
the hands of those wanting to stereotype social work as linked to the Socialist
Workers Party. Tapping into this rich vein of attack, Brewer and Lait (1980) asked
Can social work survive? in a polemic attacking social workers’ practice of casework
and arguing for subsuming social services within health.Their call struck a chord
with certain elements of the Conservative Party and with the right-wing press.
This questioning of social work led to the establishment of the Barclay Committee
to examine the role and tasks of social workers.

The Barclay Committee

It is important to note that the Barclay report (Barclay, 1982) was not the only
review into the workings of professions under way at the time. In its introduction,
the report noted the questions being raised about the legitimacy of current
arrangements that had led ‘to the setting up of a Royal Commission on the Legal
Profession and to widespread debate on teaching and on policing’ (Barclay, 1982,
p viii). But social work did not have the solid foundations of those other professions
and the publication of the report was awaited with some anxiety.
In practice, the report was very positive about social work, concluding that
‘social workers are needed as never before’ (Barclay, 1982, p xi). It identified two
strands in social work practice – counselling and social care planning.The former
was direct relationship-based work with clients, helping them to deal with the

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Social work’s ambivalence about professionalism

problems they were confronting. The latter role was partly coordination of the
various services and assistance needed by the individual or family; and partly the
indirect work needed to prevent social problems by working with communities
and groups.
This aspect of practice was termed community social work in the report, which
explicitly endorsed the concept of working on a neighbourhood basis and going
beyond individual help.This was an important endorsement of ‘patchwork’ and was
the most controversial aspect of the report.The first dissenting note was by three
members of the committee and was drafted by Roger Hadley. This argued for a
more wholehearted embrace of a different structure for social services delivery. It
argued for neighbourhood work to be delivered by community-oriented social
workers, with specialist workers being called in to deal with problems beyond
the capacity of generalists.
Professor Robert Pinker’s second dissenting note challenged the underlying
concepts of the ambitious role sketched out for social work. He wrote:

Social work should be explicitly selective rather than universalist in

focus, reactive rather than preventive in approach and modest in its
objectives. Social work should be preventive with respect to the needs
which come to its attention; it has neither the capacity, the resources
nor the mandate to go looking for needs in the community at large.
(Barclay, 1982, p 237)

This was a direct challenge to the broad concept of need envisaged in the
Seebohm report.
Pinker went on to attack the loose concept of community used in the report
and for good measure the looseness of the concept used in the Seebohm report
‘when it failed to discover a specific definition of “the family” and immediately
proceeded to extol the virtues of “the community” which, for the purposes of
the Committee, came to mean everybody and everything’ (Barclay, 1982, p 242).
Pinker argued for more specialist workers within teams and available as consultants
outside teams.
While the committee was sceptical about the continuing relevance of social
casework, redefining it as counselling, Webb and Wistow suggested that Pinker’s
note of dissent ‘partly reflected the casework traditions of child care and of
psychiatric and medical social work’ (Webb and Wistow, 1987, p 207). In doing so, it
reflected the area of practice that was recognisably social work and to which other
professions laid no claim. As the counselling aspect of practice became pushed to
the perimeter of social services practice, it became vulnerable to absorption by
other groups. Counselling itself has grown exponentially, with the recognition of
its central role in dealing with disasters and with helping troubled people who
do not have a recognisable psychiatric disorder, but most of this growth has been
outside social care services.

31