Integrating Social Work Methods

Harry Specht, Anne Vickery, Harry Specht, Anne Vickery

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781032058054
• eBook ISBN: 9781000438147
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

Throughout its history, social work has been seeking a means to state its purposes and methodology as a unity that transcends the purposes and methodology applicable in particular fields of practice, or sanctioned by particular legislation, or practised by a particular kind of worker. Recent changes in society, developments in social work practice, new additions to the knowledge base of social work and current reorganisation of the social services had led to an intensified interest in this 'integrated' approach.

Originally published in 1977, Integrating Social Work Methods introduces the reader to the main developments in the conceptualisation of a unitary method. It clarifies what it is that is being unified, identifies issues involved in the attempt to unify, and discusses their implications for social work practice and training. As such it represented the first substantial British text in the field, and was widely welcomed by social work practitioners, administrators and educators at the time.

PART I BACKGROUND TO INTEGRATING SOCIAL WORK METHODS

In this first part of the book we deal with a variety of subjects that provide an understanding of unitary modes of social work practice. The first chapters develop the background. In Chapter 1 we discuss the societal context of recent developments in social work practice. Chapter 2 deals with the ways in which theory serves as a guide to practice. In Chapter 3 we describe varying perspectives that have been used to bring about a higher degree of integration in social work practice.

In Chapter 4, ‘Theory development and the unitary approach to social work practice’, Howard Goldstein describes the processes and steps involved in this development. Most important, he conveys a feature of this process that is frequently overlooked, perhaps because it is so difficult to grasp: that is, that the development of theory is a creative and a learning process. Goldstein provides us with a penetrating and delicate insight into how his own intellectual and experiential perceptions combine to make him a practitioner-scientist.

In the last chapter of Part I, Allen Pincus and Anne Minahan describe their model of a unitary method of social work practice. Their model is based on a distinct view of the nature of social work practice which they describe in terms of its resource systems, functions and purpose. Theirs is an ambitious undertaking. Students and practitioners will appreciate the clarity with which they present their ideas.

Chapter 1 SOCIAL TRENDS

Harry Specht

Social trends and intellectual thought of the 1960s encouraged the integration of knowledge in the social sciences and of practice in the helping professions. Several social forces are associated with these trends. One phenomenon of significance was the enormous expansion of knowledge that had taken place in the first half of the twentieth century. The sheer size and bulk of this knowledge made it increasingly unwieldy and difficult to integrate in all disciplines and professions. Social work practice over the last twenty-five years has been enriched by theories about human behaviour (e.g. ego psychology, role theory and behaviour modification), small group theory, theories about community behaviour from sociology, political science and anthropology, organisational theory and social policy analysis. We have only just begun to understand the impact of this inundation of knowledge on both education and practice.¹

The second major social force-perhaps ‘set of social forces’ would be a better term-that pushed forward the integration of knowledge and practice is the many-faceted movement for social change in the 1960s with respect to civil rights (of racial and ethnic minority groups, women, students and other population categories that have been deprived and discriminated against), definitions of deviance that stigmatise and disadvantage particular groups (e.g. homosexuals) and political-economic issues such as atomic testing, war, distribution of wealth and consumer protection. In the blazing light of these burning issues the social reform functions which had been historically prominent in the profession appeared to have become pale and anaemic.

And, finally, the social services have become a great social force in themselves because they have grown so large, important and expensive. Social services, which is one of the major items in the national budget of all industrialised countries, has become big business, and social workers are among the managers of that business even though training for the profession has, for the most part, ignored this particular feature of the profession’s relationship to social welfare as an institution.

In education, dissatisfaction with, and concern about, the fragmentation of knowledge frequently resulted in the development of interdisciplinary programmes at an undergraduate and graduate level as well as attempts to make education more ‘relevant’. These efforts were manifest usually in more intensive programmes of field studies, in closer relationships between the classroom and the community and in programmes in which students ‘learn by doing’. (Some people would view this particular trend as a not very useful one for the development of knowledge and theory for social work because social work and programmes of training for the profession had been, if anything, a too vocationally-oriented enterprise, overly dependent on a narrowly-based, pragmatic practice. From this perspective, social work needs most to increase the theoretical and analytic power of the profession rather than to increase the reliance of its developing professionalism on the field of practice.)

In actual practice in the human services, concerns revolved around fragmentation of service-delivery systems and efforts to achieve better co-ordination of services;² it also focused on practice-the behaviour, methods, skills and knowledge of the professional.³ Social work was by no means the only profession that was subject to critical, often acrimonious, evaluation in that period. Doctors, lawyers, psychologists and other professional groups were frequently called to the public carpet for being over-specialised and (because of their alleged excessive concern with self-aggrandising professional prerogatives) out of touch with the community (especially the poor and the deprived) whose interests they are supposed to serve.⁴

Social work was somewhat more vulnerable to these accusations than other professional groups for several reasons. First, the question of specialisation has been of concern to the social work profession from its beginnings; actually, social work began as a collection of specialisations in search of a profession. It was over-specialised before it had developed a basic technology and theoretically-based methodology.

Secondly, social workers work with the poor more than any other group of professionals. Therefore, when the poor were rediscovered in the 1960s and society’s consciousness of many other groups that are deprived and discriminated against was heightened, it is not surprising that social work and social services come in for a great deal of critical attention. Indeed, much of the concern and dissatisfaction with social work practice found its expression within the profession itself.⁵

During a period in which human relations and conceptions of human rights were undergoing revolutionary changes, some of the functions of social work that had become fairly well established were bound to be challenged and questioned. Many of the clinical, nurturing, socialising, custodial, therapeutic, and care-taking functions of social workers came to be perceived as means by which society exercised control over oppressed groups.⁶ The view of social work as a conservative force was reinforced by the fact that the vast majority of social workers were engaged in carrying out these kinds of functions and relatively few were involved in the social change activities associated with community work, community organisation and social action. Thus, at best, social services were viewed as inadequate, insufficient and fragmented. At worst, they were among society’s means for ‘blaming the victim’ and maintaining an unjust social order.

Studies of the effectiveness of social casework as a means by which to solve social problems further reinforced these views because the findings were, in a nutshell, that professional social casework made no difference in efforts to relieve social stress.⁷ We do not want to digress from the purpose of this essay to undertake an evaluation of the many evaluations of social casework. However, we cannot pass this subject by without noting that the research design of many of the studies of social casework effectiveness are not well suited to the task: that is, many of the studies⁸ deal with client populations who are usually suffering from problems caused by extreme economic deprivation and who did not, themselves, request the kind of help that was proffered by the social caseworkers who treated them. Some studies of the outcomes of social casework interventions have found, for example, that social casework does make a difference in the treatment of people who voluntarily seek therapeutic help.⁹ Moreover, in many of the studies of casework effectiveness, the nature of the casework intervention is not clear; in many studies that use control groups it is not clear as to how the stimulus given to the experimental groups (i.e. casework) differed from what was given to a control group. By and large, most of these studies have searched for changes in individual and family functioning brought about as the result of clinically-oriented intervention, a highly unrealistic expectation in the light of the mounting evidence that inter- and intrapersonal factors are only one of the many sets of factors that cause these problems.

In bringing questions about the effectiveness of the studies of effectiveness to the reader’s attention, we simply want to encourage a degree of scepticism which, we believe, must be applied to all research. Studies of the effectiveness of therapeutic interventions notwithstanding, social work is associated with a vast and growing institution of social welfare that carries out a wide range of functions for the community. The ultimate test of the usefulness of this enterprise will not hinge on the success of any one type of intervention but, rather, on the extent to which the community values the totality of the services performed by social workers. A unitary approach is more likely to provide social workers with a perspective that allows them to plan, implement and evaluate their practice in the context of that totality.

The growth of social work and social services over the past fifteen years has been of a staggering magnitude. In Britain, the recommendations of the Younghusband Report¹⁰ in regard to social work training gave an enormous impetus to the development of social work education and of the profession itself. Estimated outputs from courses that qualified people for social work practice increased dramatically. Figures from the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work indicate that in 1961 there were 325 people who received some kind of qualification for practice. By 1972, the output increased sixfold with 1,933 qualifications.¹¹

An interesting feature of the Younghusband Report is the far-sighted direction it set for the field’s growth. Although the field of social work had not yet developed a vocabulary with which to deal with ideas about the service-delivery and inter-organisational problems of which today’s social workers are so conscious, Younghusband laid great stress upon preparing professionals who could deal with them. Phrases such as ‘combining functions’, ‘co-operation between workers of many agencies’ and ‘integration of effort’ appear over and over again in the Report.

Social work, the profession, can grow only as rapidly as there is growth in the institutional base that gives it substance and meaning. Thus, growth and change in social work is contingent upon changes in social welfare. Social services have, of course, grown concurrently with, and as rapidly as, social work. From 1963 to 1973 expenditure on the personal social services as a proportion of gross national product rose from 0·3 to 0·8 per cent; and as a proportion of total public expenditure from 0·8 to 1·7 per cent.¹²

The major Seebohm¹³ recommendation calling for the creation of a unified social services department in local authorities was given statutory support in the Local Authority Social Services Act of 1970. While the Seebohm Report does not specifically discuss social work practice, its impact on the profession has been quite direct. Seebohm devotes a great deal of attention to the organisation and functions of social services departments. It particularly highlights the social service tasks of prevention, community work and provision of an integrated service. In addition, the Report devotes an entire chapter to questions of the size and needs of social work training.

The clear implication of Seebohm is that social work practice must change. While the forms these changes are to take are not specified, the general directions are perceptible: services provided by social workers should be better integrated than they have been in the past; social services must be able to help individuals deal with their environment which consists of many inter-related parts-family, neighbourhood, agencies, and so forth; social work that relies exclusively on casework methods (whether clinically-oriented or based on practical provision) is insufficient. Thus, in our view, Seebohm calls for a higher degree of integration of social work methods of practice. For this reason, the subject matter of this volume is particularly germane to the social services.

Notes and References for Chapter 1

1. See Sheila B. Kamerman et al., ‘Knowledge for practice: social science in social work’, in Alfred J. Kahn (ed.), Shaping the New Social Work (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973).
2. Neil Gilbert, ‘Assessing service-delivery methods: some unsettled questions’, Welfare in Review, vol. XLIII, no. 4 (December 1969), pp. 25-33; William Reid, ‘Interagency coordination in delinquency prevention and control’, Social Service Review, vol. XXXVIII, no. 4 (December 1964).
3. See, for example: Willard C. Richan and Allan R. Mendelsohn, Social Work: the Unloved Profession (New York: Franklin Watts, 1973); Richard Cloward and Francis F. Piven, ‘Professional bureaucracies: benefit systems as influence systems’, in Murray Silberman (ed.), The Role of Government in Promoting Social Change (New York: Columbia University School of Social Work, 1966); Matthew Dumont, ‘The changing face of professionalism’, Social Policy (May/June 1972).
4. See Arnold Gurin, ‘Education for changing practice’, in Kahn (ed), Shaping the New Social Work, pp. 169-98; Richard Cloward and Irwin Epstein, ‘Private social welfare’s disengagement from the poor’ and ‘The case of family adjustment agencies’, in Mayer Zald (ed.), Social Welfare Institutions (New York: Wiley, 1965); Gideon Sjoberg et al., ‘Bureaucracy and the lower class’, Sociology and Social Research, vol. L, no. 3 (April 1966).
5. See Richan and Mendelsohn, Social Work: the Unloved Profession; Henry Miller, ‘Value dilemmas in social casework’, Social Work, vol. XIII, no. 1 (January 1968); John L. Ehrlich, ‘The “turned-on” generation: new antiestablishment action roles’, Social Work, vol. XVI, no. 4 (October 1971).
6. For an amusing perspective on the social control function of helping professionals, see Kenneth Keniston, ‘How community mental health stamped out the riots (1968-78)’, Trans-action, vol. V, no. 8 (July/August 1968), pp. 21-9.
7. Edward J. Mullen et al. (eds.), Evaluation of Social Intervention (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1972); Joel Fischer, ‘Is casework effective? A review’, Social Work, vol XVIII, no. 1 (January 1973), pp. 5-20.
8. See, particularly, Fischer, ‘Is casework effective?’
9. Steven Paul Segal, ‘Research on the outcome of social work therapeutic intervention : a review of the literature’, Journal of Health and Social Behaviour, no. 13 (March 1972), pp. 3-17.
10. Report of the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Table of Contents
• Dedication Page
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• Part I: Background to Integrating Social Work Methods
• Part II: Content to be Integrated
• Part III: Issues and Problems in Education and Practice
• Index