Professional Education for Social Work in Britain

An Historical Account

Marjorie J. Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781032056289
• eBook ISBN: 9781000438512
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Social Work

Originally published in 1965, Professor Marjorie Smith's classic little book traces the story of professional education for social workers in this country, which has been a pioneer and has influenced countries overseas.

There were the various committees of the Charity Organization Society on training and social education and the contribution of such great figures as Lord Avebury, Alfred Marshall, Mrs Bosanquet, Sir Charles Loch and Professor Urwick. Professor Smith brings out the long-continued struggle to establish professional standards and genuine professional education through integrated training in both theory and practice. The book ends with some fascinating appendices, including an original paper by Alfred Marshall. It traces briefly but vividly the origin and gradual acceptance of the main principles on which social work and preparation for social work are now based. Originally published in pamphlet form in 1953.

APPENDIX I The Training of Volunteers¹

By

Mrs DUNN GARDNER

BEFORE those in charge of the District Committees of the C.O.S. can be expected to devote themselves to the difficult and troublesome task of Training Volunteer Workers, they must be really convinced that this is one of their chief and most important duties.

We are very fond of reiterating that the C.O.S. is an organizing and not a relief Society, but in practice we of the District Committees feel very loth to undertake the constant daily trouble involved in bringing about this organization. We are willing enough to have a try to organize some large institution, or local charity, or parish meeting, or benevolent society – to organize, in fact, en bloc – but when it becomes a question of organizing individuals – that is to say, of convincing them, one by one, that our principles are true, and of inducing them to guide their actions by these principles, we are most of us inclined to shirk the task. I believe myself that the wholesale system of doing things is as false when applied to organization as when applied to relief, and that important bodies can only be truly won over to our side by carefully and thoroughly dealing with the individuals who compose them.

¹ Read to the Council of the Charity Organisation Society, November 26, 1894, and printed in the C.O.S. Occasional Papers – First Series – No. 46.

We must at once dismiss from our minds the idea that workers are to be trained only with a view to their being useful to their trainers. Often when the subject of volunteers is being discussed I have heard people say, ‘Oh, I would so much rather do the work myself.’ Of course they would – it would take half the time, and less than half the trouble, of getting someone else to do it – but the result attained would be quite different. The district offices of the C.O.S. exist not to get their own special office work well done, nor to assist a certain number of cases every year, but to improve the general condition of the poor, in their own particular district, and throughout London. The Committee largely devote their energies to relief work because this is the chief means at their disposal for the organization of those individuals by whom it is hoped that the improvement may be brought about. One of the best methods of teaching is the giving of object lessons; and each case carefully and efficiently dealt with by a C.O.S. Committee ought to be an object lesson in the best methods of charity. Once let this principle be accepted, and we see our offices, instead of being Relief Societies working in rivalry with other Relief Societies, and competing with them for funds, for workers, and even for cases – instead of this, we see them become what I believe they were meant to be – and what they must be to achieve their object – Schools of True Charity. The Secretary at one of these schools, of course, will not expect a new pupil to relieve him of his work, but the advent of each learner will mean to him new duties and new responsibilities. He will cease to regard each pupil, who leaves after his course is over, as one on whom the labours of training have been wasted; for he will know that it is away from the old school, that the exercise of the principles taught there are most needed; and he will pride himself on the number of workers trained in the science of Charity, whom he can afford to send out as missionaries, while he still keeps his own establishment up to a high standard of efficiency.

Regarding C.O.S. offices from this point of view, the practical question presents itself, what is it best to do with new workers? And to answer this question, we must, I think, divide our new workers into two classes – those who offer their help to the C.O.S., and those who are already at work in the district. We will begin with the first class, who are far the easier to deal with, though much I say about them is applicable to the other class, too.

Now, I should like to lay special stress on two points. One is that the first thing to do with new workers is to interest them: if we fail to do this I think we shall not get far in training them. And the second point to which I want to draw attention goes hand in hand with the first, and it is that you must make all workers – old as well as new, for the matter of that – feel their own Responsibility. It is useless to expect anyone to go on regularly doing anything unless he feels that it makes some difference to somebody whether he does it or not. No doubt his attendance must often involve considerable personal inconvenience, and, if he finds that things go on equally well, whether he does or does not keep his engagements, it is only natural that he should stay away when it is difficult for him to come – but once let him be sure that inconvenience, or delay, or suffering, will follow on his failing to do what he has undertaken, and you will find he is very unlikely to let anything stand in the way of his work.

Bearing then in mind these two points, that men and women if they are to stick to voluntary work must be interested in it, and must recognize their own share of responsibility in what is being done, we will go on to deal with our new worker.

The Secretary has generally from the very first two courses open to him. Probably there is some bit of work at the office which is standing over till it can get taken in hand. The new worker may have this bit of work explained to him, and may be set down to carry it on. If he happens to take to it, well and good; if not, why then he will soon leave off coming to the office, and the same bit of work will be ready to hand to choke off the next energetic aspirant after employment (I can recommend the loan books as a very valuable extinguisher of enthusiasm – copying numerous begging letters, on an old case long since closed except from a money point of view, is also not bad). Or, instead of instructing him in this special bit of work, the Secretary may, to the best of his ability, try to train the newcomer, not for any special work, but for work itself; may, in fact, teach him not to make the head of the pin, or the point of the pin, but the whole article. To do this it is desirable that all new workers should go through the whole routine of the office, should open letters and answer them, should find case papers, and write them up, should deal with applicants, take loan money, enter up the different books, and see that inquiries from other Committees have been properly dealt with – indeed, I would like everyone who comes to work at a C.O.S. office to learn as far as possible the duties of a Secretary, so as to be able if required to carry on any of them. One great gain of this system is that it does away with the notion which sometimes prevails, that there is something sacred about case papers and office documents, and that they should never be interfered with except under the special directions of the Secretary or Agent. If every worker has free access to papers, it will soon be understood that they exist not for the special information of the Secretary, but for the use of the whole Committee, and that they must be so kept as to be intelligible to all.

Of course, all this involves a great deal of inspection, and calls for constant patience and tact on the part of the Secretary (for instance, he will often find the letter about the Notice B Committee case, of the boy Jones, carefully put away in the Pension box, on the case of widow Jones), but ill results from such mistakes are easily guarded against by proper supervision. In letter-writing it may be a long time before any letter written by a newcomer can be sent out, and often the Secretary will have to spend part of his afternoon in re-writing the letters produced by volunteers in the morning. But this only lasts for a time, a time varying in length with each worker; for let us always remember that our workers have quite as varied natures as our applicants, and require to be dealt with in quite as varied a manner. Sometimes a new worker becomes useful in the office within a week of his coming; sometimes it is a month, or even a year, before any work he does has any practical value in really helping on the business of the Committee. Everyone before deciding on his future work should, I think, do a certain amount of visiting, and the best way I know of arranging for this is to get one of the most experienced S.R.D. almoners to take the new worker on her rounds a few times. More practical knowledge can be gained during one morning passed in the homes of the poor with a trained visitor, than in listening at the office to any amount of precepts about visiting. When the new worker has seen something of all that is being done at a C.O.S. office, he is in a position to decide for what branch of the work he feels most interest and is most suited.

For the full utilization and training of volunteers, I think it is a good plan to divide up the work of a Charity Organisation Society office as much as possible, placing each department under the special care of some one member of Committee who is responsible for its good working to the Secretary, who in his turn is responsible to the Committee. I would suggest that such departments may be formed:

• For all matters connected with finance
• For pension
• For children boarded-out and in homes
• For surgical cases For convalescent cases For loan cases For invalid children
• For cases arising in connection with the School Board. No office would, I think, need all these departments; they are only meant as suggestions.

Every member in charge of such department, and every visitor or almoner in charge of a special parish, should be encouraged to have an understudy for his part. By this I mean that he should have some other worker in training, under him, who will help in the special work, and will be able, in the event of the head of the department being called away, to step into his place. Head workers should often consider what would happen to their special branch of our business should they have to be absent for several months; and the Secretary will do well, I think, to caution them against making themselves indispensable.

This dividing up of the office work, besides giving a large field for the responsible employment of volunteers, relieves the Secretary of much routine work, and so sets free his time for the training of new workers. It is quite wrong, I think, to expect that the Secretary of any Committee should do the bulk of the casework. Though he must be cognisant of all that goes on in the office, he should himself, I think, only carry on just enough of it to keep the work up to that high standard of efficiency on which he must depend for an illustration of the truth of those principles which have called the Charity Organisation Society into existence.

Now we will pass on to the other class of workers we have to deal with at our C.O.S. offices – those already at work in the district. These are very difficult to get into touch with at all, but we cannot lay too much stress on the importance of organizing their efforts. They are chiefly, I think, City missionaries, district visitors, and ladies connected with the I.C.A.A., the M.A.B.Y.S., and with Evening Clubs. The time they wish to devote to charitable work is already occupied, they have their distinct interests, and they only come into our office by chance, probably over some case in which they are interested. I have found that the first thing to do with a local worker is to dispel the idea that the C.O.S. regards him as an intruder. He will apologize over and over again for taking up the Secretary’s time, and will be profuse in his thanks if some slight trouble is taken for him. I have often found it almost impossible to get him to realize that the chief object of the existence of a C.O.S. office is to afford information, and to give advice, and to endeavour to strengthen the efforts already being made for good, and that, far from wishing to supersede local effort, our chief desire is to strengthen it.

If a case brought by a local worker proves helpable, it is very desirable to get the worker to carry on the case for the Committee, to explain to him that the opinion of one who has known the case for a long while will be much valued by the Committee, and that the fact that he is willing to continue indefinitely visiting the case will have considerable weight in the Committee’s decision. When the case is a well-known one, which has been refused over and over again as unhelpable, there is nothing to do, I think, but to go through the old papers carefully and thoroughly with the local worker, trying to make clear why the case could not be helped, and to explain that if, now, any fresh facts can be brought to light to prove the past decision was wrong, the Committee are quite willing to go afresh into the matter.

When a local worker does come to the office it is desirable to take the opportunity of talking over with him any other cases in which he is at all likely to be interested, and if possible to get him to do something for the Committee, on any one of them, e.g. to collect a loan, or take a pension, or instil temperance. Very often a local worker is glad of some special information about benefit clubs, or evening classes, or the M.A.B.Y.S. offices, or hospitals. Some of them, especially District Visitors, often seem wonderfully ignorant of the district in which they are working. They are glad, too, sometimes of some C.O.S. papers, such as that on the Three Clubs’. After a few calls, the local worker may be induced to come to Committee to hear his own case discussed, and will perhaps stay on to listen to those of others living in the parish in which he is interested. I do not myself think it is much good to get quite new workers to attend long Committee meetings. The quick succession of long cases, presented in an unknown form, conveys very little at first. (I remember a lady telling me that the idea she carried away from the first C.O.S. Committee meeting she ever attended, was what a wonderful man R.O. must be. He seemed to be expected to know something of every family, and was helping or had helped so many.) When new workers do begin to attend Committee meetings, I think they should always sit where they can look over the case papers, and if they will, it is a good plan to get them to write the decisions. Every case which a local worker can be induced to carry through for the Committee is a great deal gained. Nothing is so likely to make him dissatisfied with incomplete trifling as to take part in thoroughly good work. Efforts should be made to let him see practically the better results of thorough work.

Don’t let it be thought for a moment that I mean these remarks to apply to all local workers. There are men and women in some districts who are engaged in improving the condition of the poor, quite as thoroughly and as efficiently as we «are, and who often, I am afraid, regard us with some suspicion. When they can be induced to come to us, with their wide local knowledge, their long experience gained by daily life amongst the poor, and their different standpoint from ours, they may have to learn from us a little about our special forms and formalities, but in wider matters it is they who will have to teach. As long as such men are at work, and hold aloof from us, we must feel that we have somehow failed to find quite the right way to organize charity.

I have not spoken of the importance of reading in the training of all workers. Every C.O.S. office, I suppose, has a few books it lends to its new recruits. I should like to see these few books become a real library in every case; and if there were a proper supply of books there would be no difficulty, I think, in getting them read. It is, however, practically no easy matter to procure new books for the office. If we buy them our General Fund has to pay, and our balance sheet will look all the worse for it next year. It would be nice to suggest to our next would-be benefactor that he should present the Society with thirty-nine suitable little libraries.

I have spoken throughout as though the training of workers depended entirely on the Secretary; let me therefore explain that I regard the Secretary only as the person who carried out the wishes of his Committee, and that in this, as in all else, a Secretary acting without the hearty cooperation of his Committeee is in a great measure powerless for good.

In conclusion, I should like again to point out that for the improvement of the general condition of the poor we do not want to produce only enough trained workers to carry on our own office work, but to make all work in our different districts efficient. Trained workers are needed to serve as Guardians; to visit the workhouse and infirmary; to act as school managers and members of Notice B Committees; to take part in the management of School Banks and Collecting Banks; to visit in connection with the I.C.A.A., the MA.B.Y.S. and the GJFS., and with the many Reformatory and Rescue Societies; to work under the clergy and ministers; to act as visitors to the hospitals, and as workers for the C.C.H.F., for Evening Clubs for boys and girls, for Sanitary Aid Committees, and for many other purposes. Those in charge of our District Offices have under their control the means of training these workers. They will know whether they have hitherto made the most of the trust confided to them.

Extracts from the FIRST REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON TRAINING²

adopted by the Council of the Charity Organisation Society, December 12, 1898

THIS Committee was appointed on the 28th day of June, 1897. It has met eleven times, and has held a Conference of some of the most experienced members of District Committees, at which the subject of training in its various aspects was fully discussed. It has already made a recommendation to the Administrative Committee with regard to a proposed course of instruction for district and honorary secretaries, which has been adopted by the Administrative Committee. It now begs to present an introductory report and some recommendations.

It is possibly only of late years that the importance of ‘training’ as a special feature of charity organization has been at all generally recognized. Formerly probably it was considered that the work itself would be sufficiently educ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Foreword
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• I. Early training within the agencies
• II. The transition to more formally organized training schemes
• III. The School of Sociology
• IV. The Amalgamation
• V. Afterthought
• Appendix I
• II. Economic Teaching at the Universities in Relation to Public Well-being, Professor A. Marshall, 1902
• III. Extracts from the Confidential Report of the Social Education Committee, 1903