fabian tract 393 
which way for social worl<? 

contents 
1 the Seebohm report 
2 the efficacy of social work 
3 social work and society 
4 manpower: quantity,

qualifications and distribution 17,5 recommendations for policy 24 


this pamphlet, like all publications of the Fabian Society, 
represents not the collective view of the Society but only the 
view of the individual who prepared it. The responsibility of 
the Society is limited to approving the publications which it 
issues as worthy of consideration within the Labour movement. 
Fabian Society, 11 Dartmouth Street, London SW1 . 
May 1969 SBN 7163 0393 0 

. 
1 

1. the Seebohm report 
A social service department, providing a community based and family oriented 
service available to all-this was the major recommendation of the Seebohm 
Committee on Local authority and allied personal social services (cmnd 3703). 
This new department will have responsibilities extending well beyond those of 
existing local authority departments and will, the Committee stated, "reach far 
beyond the discovery and rescue of social casualties; it will enable the greatest 
possible number of individuals to act reciprocally, giving and receiving service for 
the weU-being of the whole community " (para 2). 

But far-ranging, as the report was, it provided little answer to the basic issues facing 
the social work profession and the planner of the social services in this country 
to-day. What contributions has the profession to make in our efforts to improve 
the quality of life in a modern industrial society? What are the priorities for social 
workers-whom should they be helping and how? How do we ensure that the 1 
services of social workers are " available for all?" And how do we maintain the 
quality of these services? 

, These issues stand for any profession, whatever type or form of co-ordination 
is eventually implemented. They were in fact posed some eighteen years ago by 
Richard Titmuss in his inaugural lecture as the first professor of social administration 
in the University of London, when he spoke of the problem of priorities. 
"In a situation of limited resources, quality of service comes into conflict with 
quantity of service." " To what extent, if at all," he asked "are contemporary 
social needs being artificially developed by the professional, administrative and 
technical interests upon whose skills the services depend? What, to put it crudely, 
are we getting for our money? Is an increasing proportion of the cost going, first, 
to those who do the welfare rather than to those who need the welfare and second, 
for treating at a · higher standard the symptoms of need rather than in curing or 
preventing the causes of need?" (reprinted in Essays on "the welfare state," pp 2324, 
Alien and Unwin, 1958). 

Jnification and social work professionalisation 

These questions gain added importance in the light of the Seebohm recommendations 
for the unification of the social services which will increase the professionalsation 
of social work. Both unification and increased professionalisation may bring 1 
~onsiderable advantages. The firm establishment of a profession may lead to the 
;trengthening of the professional in defence of his client, to higher quality in work 
md a greater assumption of responsibilities. But, equally professionalisation may 

, Jring dangers, coming between the worker and his client or the community at large. I 

Jnification may serve a multitude of purposes. It may lead to a saving of resources 


and reduplication of work, to a greater degree of consultation, and so collaboration 


\ in the provision of services, and to a better service to the public. It may strengthen 
the professional against the bureaucrat, but also against the public, and may help 
1to legitimise demands for further privi'leges, rights and benefits to be awarded in 

deference to assured professional status. 

There is the danger of " rigor professionis " if the co-ordinated units are set up ' 
too quickly. The social work profession may unify and very largely withdraw into 
itself. It may continue to refine and develop its existing skills but neglect its responsibility 
to adjust to the changing needs and expectations of the people and the 

\ community it exists to serve. There is the danger too that current disillusion with, 
land opposition towards, bureaucracies, and officialdom-the whole structure of 
1 establishment-may lead to an increase in the ever-present tension between the 
community and its official caretakers. As a result the larger departments may 
simply become even more isolated than the existing ones while " grass-roots" 
oq~anisations multiply to help small areas and groups but without t<he power or 
the permanence to achieve more than a holding operation. 

It is vital that these dangers should be faced now and discussed widely inside and ' 
outside the profession. An anonymous commentator has written "For those of us 
who have been looking forward to an authoritative case being made for the establishment 
of a comprehensive social work service, the Seebohm Committee has 
served us well" (anon Case Conference, August 1968, p140). A cit.izen reading 
the report might indeed conclude that it had more to do with the work satisfaction 
and career structure of the professional social worker than it had to do with his 
own needs or rights in the modern welfare state. 

Ten years ago Barbara Wootton referred to social workers as" largely the victims of 
the contemporary obsession with professionalism ... the second revolution of the 
past half-century . . . One of the more regrettable features of the Younghusband 
Re rt is the unqualified and undiscriminating blessing which it gives to this" , 
("Daddy Knows Best," Twentieth Century, Winter 1959, p256) There is a danger · 
that the Seebohm report may have made the same mistake. 

The Report received a generally enthusiastic reception at its publication in July 
1968. " A great State paper " was the description by David Donnison, Professor 
of Social Administration in the University of London, in an article in the special 1 
enlarged October issue of Social W ark. "For many social workers," the editorial 
declared, it represented "the fuifilment of their highest hopes." One of the leading 
members of the Seebohm Committee described it as the most important report 
for social work since " the Majority Report of .the Royal Commission on the Poor 
Laws " in 1909 (the report signed by Charles Loch of the Charity Organisation 


Society, not Lhe Minority Report signed by George Lansbury and Beatrice Webb) . 
In ~he debate in the House of Lords lavish praise was bestowed on the committee 
which had produced a "black and white report" with "more than 200 specific 
recommendations," and the report was constantly coupled with that of Beveridge 

' in 1942 as one of the landmarks in Br.itish social policy (House of Lords, 29 January 
1969, cols 1168-1193 and 1198-1274). 


Only a few voices have been raised in opposition, the most critical being a perhaps 
prudently anonymous medical officer who regarded it as " a nationa'l disaster." 
Yet while some social workers have described it as revolutionary, others have 
argued that it is only a tidying-up or " an ennabling instrument for further work 
to be done." 

an effective family service 

This last view is perhaps the most accurate. After all the committee's terms of 
reference were " to review the organisation and responsibilities of the local authority 
, personal social services in England and Wales, and to consider what changes are 
desirable to secure an effective family service" (para 1). Although refusing to be 
shackled by these .terms on many issues, the committee did not reach any clearly-
stated conclusion as to what constituted " an effective family service." This phrase 


i reappears throughout the seven hundred paragraphs of the Report but there is 
little clarification of what is really meant. Ironically there is no chapter on the \ 
, needs of the famil_y. and its social services but only ones on categories of children, 
old people, physically handicapped people and mentally subnormal and mentally 
ill people. The clearest reference indicates not the sort of service provided or need 
met but " a service which is accessible and acceptable and which meets the need 
promptly, that is, a service which is as far as possible community based " (para 582). 

the urgent but unmet need for basic research 

To provide this " effective family service " which will be " available for al1 " it 
is clearly necessary to have information about the basic needs which such a service 
will have to meet. It is also essential to know what needs are currently being met, 
and in what way, and to know in detail the ways in which current services are ' 
failing. 

'Ten years ago the last major report on social work prior to Seebohm, the Y Qungnusband 
report, firmly and clearly called for basic research. " We were struck, 
in planning the field inquiries, by the lack of any systematic study of the part played 
by socia:l workers in meeting needs within !'he framework of the socia1 services. 
5uch information could have had an important bearing on our own inquiry. We 


should like to draw attention to the desirability of such a study. We think much 
of the confusion in regard to the functions of social workers in the health and welfare 
services, as elsewhere, is due to lack of analyses of .this kind" (Report of 
the working party on social workers in the local authority health and welfare services, 
Ministry of Hea·Ith, Department of Health for Scotland, 1959, para 11, see 
also paras 26 and 563). In fact the chairman of this committee had been stressing 
the need for such research for many years. 

What could be clearer and more precise? Yet ten years later very little has been 
\ done to remedy this basic defect. The confusion referred to in the Younghusband 
report may derive not only from a lack of analyses but also, at least in part, from 
t an actual confusion in the funct~ons of the social workers. Seebohm and his committee 
do not clarify ~his, let alone attempt to fill the gap in our knowledge of the 
basic operations of the existing system. Indeed, one of the most remarkable aspects 
of their whole report is its lightning tour of the deficiencies of the existing system 
,as if the case were already proven and documented elsewhere. In just twenty-eight 
paragraphs in five pages we are given an astonishingly brief and undetailed account. 

1There are, we are told, deficiencies in the amount, range and quality of provision. 
These three failings are exacet1bated by poor co-ordination, by the difficulty of 
' access for the would-·be consumer and others suoh as doctors, and by insufficient 
adaptabHity to meet changes in the nature and extent of social need. Equally briefly, 
within these same twenty-eight paragraphs, we are presented with the " underlying 

, causes of these shortcomings." These are; apparently, lack of sufficient resources, 
,lack of knowledge (though on this we are ·invited to see further in chapter XV) 
and divided responsibility (paras 73-100). 

Still, Seebohm too adds strong support to the demand for research (chapter XV). 
Lack of it "makes no sense in terms of administrative efficiency, and, however 
little intended, it indicates a careless attitude towards human welfare." (para 455, 
emphasis added). This in fact is an indictment of current practice. Very little , 
opportunity has been taken of the great amount of encouragement in legislation 
for agencies to undertake research. For example under the Children's and Young 
Persons' Act of 1963 the Home Secretary and local authority children's departments 
have power to carry out, or to assist others in undertaking, research into child 
care and adoption and the statutory Advisory Council on Child Care est~blished 1n 
1948 has recommended five areas as a guide to research. The Health Visitors and , 
Social Work Train·ing Act of 1962 also encouraged research but as yet there has 
been little, if any, visible result of these invitations having been taken up. 

While many social workers clearly have reservations about the value of research, 
Seebohm and his committee did not. " We cannot emphasise too strongly the part 


which research must play in the creation and maintenance of an effective family 
service. Social planning is an illusion without adequate facts; and the adequacy 
of services mere speculation without evaluation ... It must be a continuing 
process, accepted as a permanent and familiar feature of any department or agency 
concerned with social pro~ision." (para 473). 

" daddy should know better by now" 

Howe¥er much reports emphasize the essential need for research and social work 

texvbooks stress ·the importance of client self-determination, there has been very 

little energy devoted to finding out what the recipients of sooial workers' help think I 

of the services. Both the Y ounghusband and Seebohm reports, nine years apart, 
give similar and unconvincing reasons for not doing consumer research. "We 
should like to have undertaken a complementary inquiry into the reactions of those 
using the services. An ·investigation of this nature would, however, have prolonged 
our own inquiries unduly" (Younghusband, para 10). Appointed in June 1955, 
the working party reported in Felbruary 1959. The Seebohm Committee sat for 
, some two and a half years and reflected in 1968 "We were, regrettably, unable to 
sound consumer reaction to the services in any systematic fashion. This was also 
related to the fact that we made no attempt to organise a research programme as 
this would have delayed publication perhaps for another year or two" (para 43). 


Given the increasing emphasis on democratic participation and the fact that it was l 
, appointed by a socialist government, Seebohm's disregard for the potentia1 or past 
customer of the social services is the more disturbing. Perhaps it is even more 
remarkable, or ironic, or just revealing, that the committee set up to assess the 
most appropriate training for community work, and chaired by Dame Eileen 
Younghusband, not only undertook no consumer research (perhaps because it 
·was thought to be too expensive) but also made no reference to the lack of such 
enquiries-as if ·indeed they were of no relevance. The committee itself consisted 
strictly of "experts "-teachers or administrators in the social services and community 
work (Community work and social change, the report of a study group on 
training set up by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, pp XI-XIII, Longmans). 

This persistent neglect of the recipient, let alone the potential recipient of social \ 

workers' serv•ices, is particularly surprising, and disappointing, given the emphatic 

and astringent criticism of the Younghusband Report by Barbara Wootton in 1959. 

" Everything is viewed from the administrative angle, through administrative 

spectacles-'benevolently, no doubt, but always from outside, at second hand. Only 
, those who supply the various services, never those for whose benefit they are 

supplied, are fit to judge their quality. Be quiet, dear, Daddy knows best." (op cit). 


2 . the efficacy of social work 
Implicit in much that is said about the services provided by social workers seems 
\to be the assumption that anything is better than nothing. This is linked to the fact 
that, because most social workers feel themselves overworked, they do not very often 
\stop to consider what their work is achieving nor whether it should be redirected 
And because they are overburdened, they have little opportunity to follow the 
experiences of their clients; and they seem even less likely to do this when respon-
1sibilities cross jurisdictional boundaries. As the American poet Robert Frost said · 
" It couldn't be called ungentle, but how thoroughly departmental." Though of 
course, we hope that co-ord<ination will at least put a stop to this fragmentation of 
'responsibility. 
1 The Seebohm report never appears to question the efficacy of social work. Yet this 
question cannot be ignored if we are to decide whether the Seebohm proposals are 
adequate. This crucial issue has received scarcely any attention from the social 
work profession, though without a clear and positive answer the necessity for social 
workers, and more of them, must remain largely a matter of faith. 
In 1959 Mr. Robin Huws Jones asked "is our social worker really necessary?" 
and answered himself in the fourth of his twenty-nine paragraphs "surely only a ' 
modern Voltaire could deny that he sees the necessity!" (The Almoner, vol12, no 
2, p 61). Mr. Huws Jones however does go on to talk about the effectiveness of 
social work of all types, admitting the need to define the aims of " social work 
in specific, realistic operational terms" (ibid p67, and see also D. E. G. Plowman, 
"What are the outcomes of social work?", Social Work (GB), January 1969). Mr. 
Huws J ones believes that much help could be provided by the social sciences but 
confesses to " a disloyal spasm of sympathy with the complaint that the sociologists' 
cry is' Give us the job and we'll spend the next seven years sharpening the tools'." 
This is a fair complaint about my own profession but it is doubtful whether many 
sociologists in this country have been approached for help. And this certainly does 
not explain the virtual failure of the social work profession to get on with its own 
research. Certainly some projects have been started since the Younghusband report 
but mostlx_ on a very small scale. At the University of York a survey is just starting 
on the roll of medical social workers and the National Institute of Social Work 
Training has undertaken a potentially most valuable study evaluating social work 
help for a sample of 300 people aged 70 and over who receive welfare services in 
a London borough. 
"girls at vocational high" 
In the United States there have been more attempts to evaluate social work and 
measure its effectiveness. The best known is probably Girls at vocational high, an 
examination of the effect of social work counselling on some 200 teenage girls with 
2 . the efficacy of social work 
Implicit in much that is said about the services provided by social workers seems 
\to be the assumption that anything is better than nothing. This is linked to the fact 
that, because most social workers feel themselves overworked, they do not very often 
\stop to consider what their work is achieving nor whether it should be redirected 
And because they are overburdened, they have little opportunity to follow the 
experiences of their clients; and they seem even less likely to do this when respon-
1sibilities cross jurisdictional boundaries. As the American poet Robert Frost said · 
" It couldn't be called ungentle, but how thoroughly departmental." Though of 
course, we hope that co-ord<ination will at least put a stop to this fragmentation of 
'responsibility. 
1 The Seebohm report never appears to question the efficacy of social work. Yet this 
question cannot be ignored if we are to decide whether the Seebohm proposals are 
adequate. This crucial issue has received scarcely any attention from the social 
work profession, though without a clear and positive answer the necessity for social 
workers, and more of them, must remain largely a matter of faith. 
In 1959 Mr. Robin Huws Jones asked "is our social worker really necessary?" 
and answered himself in the fourth of his twenty-nine paragraphs "surely only a ' 
modern Voltaire could deny that he sees the necessity!" (The Almoner, vol12, no 
2, p 61). Mr. Huws Jones however does go on to talk about the effectiveness of 
social work of all types, admitting the need to define the aims of " social work 
in specific, realistic operational terms" (ibid p67, and see also D. E. G. Plowman, 
"What are the outcomes of social work?", Social Work (GB), January 1969). Mr. 
Huws J ones believes that much help could be provided by the social sciences but 
confesses to " a disloyal spasm of sympathy with the complaint that the sociologists' 
cry is' Give us the job and we'll spend the next seven years sharpening the tools'." 
This is a fair complaint about my own profession but it is doubtful whether many 
sociologists in this country have been approached for help. And this certainly does 
not explain the virtual failure of the social work profession to get on with its own 
research. Certainly some projects have been started since the Younghusband report 
but mostlx_ on a very small scale. At the University of York a survey is just starting 
on the roll of medical social workers and the National Institute of Social Work 
Training has undertaken a potentially most valuable study evaluating social work 
help for a sample of 300 people aged 70 and over who receive welfare services in 
a London borough. 
"girls at vocational high" 
In the United States there have been more attempts to evaluate social work and 
measure its effectiveness. The best known is probably Girls at vocational high, an 
examination of the effect of social work counselling on some 200 teenage girls with 

a control sample of the same size. I shall describe this study in a little detail because 

it seems to illustrate some of the basic problems facing social work in all countries. 

The very cautious conclusion of the book was that " on these (objective) tests no 
strong indications of effect (of counselling) are found and the conclusion must be 
stated in the negative when it is asked whether social work intervention with poten-\ 
tia:l problem high school girls was in this instance effective." (H. J. Meyer et al, 
Girls at vocational high, pl80, Russell Sage, New York, 1958). There was a marked 
discrepancy between the results of the objective tests of progress and the subjective 
evaluation of the social workers involved : this led the investigators to compare 
the workers' evaluation with the familiar " the operation was a success but the 
patient died." The social workers in fact tended to pay more attention to the ways 
in which the girls actually behaved during their counselling sessions rather than 
to the effect of the counselling on behaviour outside these sessions (ibid p157). 
This is a danger of the psycho-therapeutic process when the social worker may 
become so engrossed in building up a relationship that he may lose sight of his l 
reason for doing it. 

Many criticisms can be, and some have been, made of the study both in its 
merhodology and its theoretica1 analysis (see for the defence of the social workers, 
M. E. MacDonald, "Reunion at vocational high," Social service review, June 
1966). Of course, too sweeping claims have been made for hs findings which have 
been extended to cover-and denounce-the whole of social work. The blame 
, here must lie not just with the publicists but with a profession that has persistently 1 
failed to evaluate its own efficacy. This failure to validate techniques can be partly 
explained, I think, by the fact rhat many social workers have come to regard themselves 
as checking their own work in the process of casework counselling itself and 
in the course of discussion with colleagues and supervisors. The criteda for 


·"success" therefore are their own and not their clients'. For many the journey-J 
the casework or group sessio~lmost certainly become the goal. Clients who 
are unwilling to discuss their difficnlties in this way are classified as " unco-1 
operative" or "lacking in insight." Some talk of a client's "willingness to use 
the casework relationship" or his "ability to use the service." In the last resort 
then it may be seen as the client who is the failure. 

The social worker's own insights into the indiv,idual's problems may often be 
determined by the techniques employed. Girls at vocational high revealed very 
'clearly that the use of different social work techniques led the social worker to 
change her view of the client's situation, and so brought her to consider different 
, ways of solving the client's problem. In individual casework the social worker was 
more likely to assume that a client was magnifying or distorting the problem irl 
some way. In group sessions the worker was compelled to recognise that what the 


client said was true, as in these sessions, the girls had a greater opportunity to 
" bring in their world." " When all or a majority of members of the group, in spite 
of differences in their psychological make-up, almost simultaneously described 
situations of external stress in similar ways, the worker herself came to view the 

problem differently . . . Discussions of violent acts -suicid·e, gang warfare occurred 
frequently in the group sessions. However in the group setting it seemed 
clear to the leaders that talk about such things was more related to actual happenings 
than to the girls' inner preoccupations with such events." (ibid pp133-34). 

In some ways the authors come close to reversing the conventional wisdom of 
" treating " the deep-seated' internal causes and argue for treating what is often 
ca:lled the "presenting problem." They argued that social workers needed to pay 


1 
much greater attention to possible environmental ohanges in helping their clients. 
" Should we expect weeldy interviews with caseworkers," the authors ask, " or 
weekly counsell'ing sessions in groups, to have critical effects when situational 
conditions were hardly touched?" (p214). They lay stress on the importance for 
the social work profession of developing means of bringing about changes in the 

~ social conditions rather than trying to help clients by " .indirect efforts through 
influences on internal psyohological states." Helping a girl to stay on and get through , 
school with material assistance is given low priority by the social workers in the 
study but failure to achieve this may make other desiralble objectives even less 
attainable. Altogether this study emphasises the need not to let casework roles 
get out of proportion and the need to attempt new, and as yet less professionally 

Ifashionable, methods of help. 

the definition of social work 

It is ·impossible to study the effectiveness of social work, however, without inviting 
a clearer definition of social work. One definition of casework, provided by the 
Younghusband report (para 638), is "a personal service provided by qualified 
1 workers for individuals who require skilled assistance in resolving some material, , 
1emotiona1 or character problem." Such an all-inclusive definition led Barbara 
·Wootton to comment " ,if these skills really exist, surely they are wasted upon 

obscure members of the British working-class: would not the caseworkers do 

better to get ~heir hands on some of our world's rulers?" (op cit, p253). 

As recently as 1968 in a textbook on concepts the aim of casework was said to 

be " to help the client to manage in the community either simply with the aid of 

j 

\ encouragement from the caseworker or also by changing some of the client's attitudes 
if they are proving harmful" (Jonathan Moffet, Concept in casework treatment, 
pp3-4, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968). This would seem to plunge us back 
into the social and economic vacuum of the client-worker relationship, a view which 


I am often told has been aJbandoned by social workers. Although it may have been 1 
by the practitioners, it certainly does not appear to have been rejected by many 
of those responsible for training the new social workers. 

The difficulty of explaining and defining rhe skills peculiar to casework is well 
illustrated in a study of medical social workers' attachment to a group practice. 
" I have tried to discount any suggestion that casework is a mysterious skill only 
. to be practised by an elite," writes the medical social worker, yet concludes the 


· same §entence "but I should like to be equally emphatk that practising without 
a sound knowledge of human behaviour is wrong and dangerous." (J. AS. Forman 
and E. M. Fairbairn, Social Casework in General Practice, p79, Oxford University 
Press, 1968, emphasis added). "This knowledge," the writer adds, "may not be 
gained in a quick or superficial way." 

But within two pages of this forthright declaration Miss Fairbairn ends rhe chapter 
" Casework is commonsense-casework is having the imagination to foresee what 
might go wrong in a plan for an old lady's discharge and preparing for it in advance 

, 
-casework is feeling sufficiently involved to accept the work and carry the respon-l 
sibility." (ibid. p81, emphasis added again). 

To illustrate the d·ifficulties involved I have deliberately quoted from a study that 
is highly regarded by many social workers. It il1ustrates the dilemma that faces 
social workers who wish to claim possession of a special body of knowledge and 
appropriate techniques. Some would then want to claim a monopoly of these sk.ills I 
and to demand that only the fully qualified should be allowed to practise, and 
would concentrate their energy on refining these techniques with the hope that 
social work might be recognised as a science. It was this part of the profession, 
mainly teachers, whom Barbara Wootton so vigorously attacked in chapter IX of 
Social science and social pathology, (Alien & Unwin, 1959). 

Although I believe this group is currently dedining in strength-and has never 
been so influential in Britain as in the United States-their concern has tended , 
to direct the questions that the profession has been ask.ing inward into its own1 
processes and led it to negleot the client. 


and some senior workers in children's departments have regarded attempts by 
younger colleagues to obtain written explanations of supplementary benefit assessments 
as "militant." (Child Poverty Action Group, Poverty, no 5, p2, Winter 1967). 
Some social workers whom I met in the last few months did not even know of 
either of these groups and had no idea what was meant by for example the 
" wage stop," (the procedure whereby supplementary benefit-formerly national 
assistance-is not paid above the level that a man, unemployed or temporarily sick, 
is expected to receive in net wages even if his entitlement, because of a high rent, 
large}amily or some special need, is higher than this. Some 28,000 families headed 
by an unemployed man alone had their allowances reduced for this reason in 
February 1969. 

social workers and the attack on inequalities 

In examining the role of social work in a modern industrial and still class-bound 
society, it is vital to analyse its relevance to the basic issues of inequality and l 
privilege. It is still widely believed that the social services, as the other parts of 
the "welfare state," aTe instruments of redistribution reducing inequality. A typical-\ 
and recent statement of this view was made by T. H. Marshall, formerly professor 
of sociology and Head of the Social Science Department at the London School of 
Economics. "The social services proper-in health, welfare, education, housing, 
etc.-have undoubtedly had a profound effect on the distribution of real income '\ 
(Political Quarterly, Jan-March 1969, pp6-7, emphasis in the original). This seems 
clear and categorical enough, but a few sentences later Marshall changes his position 
remarkably. "This has been their aim . . . it is hard to say how much progress , 
has been made." 

No doubt they are redistributive, as are any other allocation of services or resources 1 
in kind. The important question is not "Do they redistribute?" but the much more 
complicated set of questions "In what directions do the social services distribute \ 
and redistribute? To what extent? How? and for how long, and with what effect ?" 
The answers to these questions then need to be set against the intentions in policy 
as to the extent and direction of red1istribution. The See'bohm Committee disregarded 
these ques,tions in deciding what constituted an " effective family service." 

Yet it is vital to know the actual effect of social workers in distributing resources, 
in k:ind in a society which is still more or less rigidly stratified by class and where 
there has been no significant downward redistribution of earnings since the begin-, 
ning of this century. As long ago as the census of 1911 the proportion of average 
earnings received by unskilled and semi-skilled working men was the same as it 
was in 1960-about 79 per cent and 86 per cent respectively. (Guy Routh, Occupation 
and pay _in Great Britain 1906-1960, p 107, Cambridge University Press, 1965). 


There have been fluctuations since 1911 but two world wars, a cold war, the depression 
of the 1920s and 1930s and the introduction of the social welfare legislation 
after 1945 has not lessened occupational differentials at all between the main groups. 
In 1911 the average unskilled man's wage was 31 per cent of the average manager's, 
by 1960 this had fallen slightly to 29 per cent. If one considers that in the 1911 
census, aeroplane pilots and aviators were grouped with acrobats, magicians and 
conjurers in the same occupational category headed "performer, showman," one , 
has some idea of the vast changes that have occurred over this period. These have 
nevertheless done very little to alter the differences between the main groups in 
the socio-economic structure of Britain. 

In 1955 Rich'ard Titmus questioned the extent of redistribution by government and 
the reduction of inequalities by all forms of social services in "The social division 
of welfare" (op cit). In the last ten years an increasing amount of evidence has 
1been published revealing that the total resources of many are well below the average 
standard of living. In 1960 as many as one in eight households existed ll!t a level 
no better than that of the recipients of national assistance. (B. Abel-Smith and 

P. Townsend, The poor and the poorest, Bell, 1965, and for a summary of research 
into poverty, A. Sinfield, "Poverty rediscovered," Race, October 1968). 
The apparent lack of interest on the part of social workers in the command of 
resources-or at least the vocal or literary members of the profession~must be 
related to two facts. Until very recently few were aware of the persistent inequalities 
lin the distribution of resources and opportunities that survived the introduction of 
the "welfare state" and even today many socia'l workers seem to see little relevance 
in the problems of inequality or the stratified class structure within which they 
\ are working. They do not pay sufficient heed to the possible connections between 


simple lack of resources and personal and family "disintegration." 

. 

Secondly, many social workers and social administrators have consciously striven 
' to escape the image of charity workers amongst the poor, and some seem to have 
believed that in this way they could best improve the standing of their own discipline. 
They have welcomed the "weUare state," worried about the effects of 
over-dependen·cy resulting from its "feather-bedding," and departed to fields of 
research and practice more in touch with the "better classes." The poverty they 
did see they tended to dismiss as due to the misuse, rather than the lack, of re-
I sources. Indeed, it can be argued that the emphasis on psychodynamic techniques in 
social work in the 1950s did much to make the poor "silent" or "invisible." 

The chairman of the Seebohm committee however estimated that poverty and bad 

housing " probably cause something like 60 per cent of the work that is now carried 

on by social workers." (in a broadcast Dole with everything, Radio 4, 23 


January 1969). Now this sort of stateme ...IH backed up by evidence could be of 
great help in establishing the priorities for action for the soci~l services. It also 
supports very strongly the view that much social work activity is simply a holding r 
operation. If the energies of social workers are directed more towards the poor, 
there are strong grounds for thinking this leads more to social control than to 
social welfare and any redistribution of resources. It is a pity that there is no 
suoh comment, or evidence for it, in the Seebohm report. Given a different emphasis 
and a greater concern with material and environmental causes of family breakdown 
and igdividual frustration, the profession of social work might well have played a I 
leading role in making society aware much earlier of the persistence of poverty. 
Instead, the major social work discovery of the 1950s was the " problem family " 
with an emphasis on the problems that came from within. It was left to others to 
pursue the questions of the level of social security payments and of individual 
rights. 

the unfathomed extent of needs 

Although the Seebohrn committee seem to have been concerned about the lack of 

co-ordination leading to multiple visiting as much as that leading to no visiting and \ 

needs remaining unknown, it did however recognise the great extent of unmet 

needs and stressed how little was known about those who required help but did/ 

not seek or receive it. In an appendix to the report, J. Packman and M. Power 

estimate that " there are at least as many children in need of help as there are 

receiving help" (appendix Q, p 354). 

The extent to which old people need the most basic help, let alone that of highly-I 

trained and highly-paid workers, and did not receive it was made clear by a cross-
national study of old people in three industrial societies, Britain, Denmark and the 
United States. Of those who were " t~nable to bathe themselves even with difficulty " 
37 per cent received no help at all and only 7 per cent were helped by the social 
services in Britain. In Denmark the proportion without any help was 5 per cent 
and in the United States 4 per cent. While by many other criteria British provision 
was as high as, or even greater than, that of the other two countries, the extent of 
unmet need was still great. Four per cent of ~hose who had difficulty in preparing 
meals received help from the social services while eleven per cent had no help 
at all. Although one per cent received "meals on wheels," six times as many seemed 
to be in need of them. Even then most recipients had meals only on one or two 
1 days a week. (P. Townsend in E. Shanas et al, Old people in three industrial 

societies, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968). 

Smaller surveys also document the unmet need, especially among the very poor. 
In a study of large families in London, eleven of the eighteen families wiVh an 



income below the then national assistance level repoi'ted that they rarely saw a 
health visitor, school care committee worker or any other" lady from the welfare." 
They did not mention any of them, either, as people they would get in touch with 
when in difficulty. (Hilary Land, Large families in London, Bell, forthcoming) . 
11he government's own study of fifty-one families wage-stopped on assistance, 
Dennis Marsden's of fatherless families on assistance and the present writer's of 
unemployed on Tyneside also found very few poor families in contact with any 
of the social services. In that survey I questioned all families about the services 
they contacted or that contacted them but abandoned this because of a very high 
"nil" response and because of my own needs to shorten the questionnaire. At the 
time (1963-64) I had assumed that this type of researCih was being carried out more 
carefully elsewhere, so gave low priority to a tangential aspect of my own research 
and did not document systematically any of the data. But such research does not 
seem to have been undertaken. 

the client's perspective 

The few studies of social workers on the job that have been made have depended 
basically upon the worker's records or account. The reality of such reports appears 
to be accepted wHhout question and the worker's view of the client regarded as 

\ final. The one-sidedness of these accounts deserves emphasis: it is all too easy to 
forget, when relationships are unequal, that the account of the person closest to 
the researcher or reader may not be the only version. (It is worth noting that this 
inequality is reflected in the convention of adding "was said to have stated " when 
quoting a" client" recalling a social worker's remarks but not when a social worker 
reports a client). 

One small study of fifteen dissatisfied working-class clients shows the client and 
the social worker in a Kafka-esque situation, each expecting different reactions of 
the other. Consulting a social worker about the behaviour of a third party (usually 
· a spouse or a child) clients were disconcerted to find that the social worker took 
no sides and gave no advice; he simply asked questions and then suggested a further 
meeting. They were particularly taken aback because most of the questions were 
directed to the client and his feelings and expectations rather than to the behaviour 
of the third party (J. E. Mayer and N. Timms, " Clash in perspective between 
worker and client," Social Casework (USA) January 1969. This is part of a larger 
study of sixty-one clients of the London Family Welfare Association, The client 
speaks: working class impressions of casework, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 
London, forthcoming). Mayer and Timms seem to see the causes of this disjunction 
in the different cultural systems of the working-class client and the apparently 
middle-class social worker, each having a different mode of problem-solving. 
But is the difficulty primarily a difference of culture? If the worker had some 


knowledge of this, could he bridge the gap between himself and his client? From 
my own experience of interviewing recipients of the social services I am inclined 
to attach more significance to the inequality of the relationship and to the very, 
different positions in the socio-economic structure of the social worker and his I 
working-class client. In addition Mayer and Timms tend to overlook the fact that 
the client often feels in a desperate situation and urgently wants help to escape from 
the immediate crisis. 

In 19§3-64 I interviewed unemployed families on Tyneside and a year la·ter in 
Syracuse, New York State. In both areas I came across many instances of what one 
might call "sweated social workers" with enormous caseloads, reserves of endurance, 
and incredible resourcefulness. At the same time I slowly became aware of 
the ways in which much of the social worker-client contact diverged from the 
textbook picture and from sociologists' view of the server-client relationship (see 
for example Goffman, Asylums, pp 321 et seq, Doulbleday Anohor, New York, 
1961). Although in many respects the picture that emerged was the same in the 
two areas in the two countries, the comments that follow apply to the families', 
and my, experiences with workers in the children's, health and welfare departments 
' of one loca:l authority and the local hospitals. Occasional contact with local authority 
departments in other parts of Britain suggests that my findings might apply more 

widely; and this belief has been supported by many social workers. 

Both the unemployed and I were made aware of the various minor indignities 1 
inflicted on applicants for services, the coldness and sometimes deliberate rudeness 
of social workers-deliberate in that it was explained to me, confidentially afterwards, 
.that it did a man good to be "dressed down" in front of a room full of people 
and to be questioned about his search for work. (This was not the local authority 
social worker's responsibility: besides, the man was disabled and unskilled and 
only unemployed three months, at a time when many absolutely fit unskilled 
labourers had been workless for six months). What surprised me most, I think.r 
was the numlber of times families seemed to be treated discourteously by sociaH 
workers. There was often no apology for keeping a woman waiting for an 
hour or more, or for having one's cup of tea in front of clients without offering 
them one. Sitting at a desk and busy with papers, some sooial workers did not look 
up when the client entered or welcome him in and one began the interview, still 
without looking at the client, " All right, sit down Mrs. . Now what is it 
this time?" At the very least such lack of good manners affected the esta;blishment\ 
of a relationship. 

People in fact often commented on this to me. I began to get the impression that 

they experienced peremptory treatment more often from the professionaH/ 

qualified social worker, teacher or doctor than they did from loca·l or central govern



ment officials. It may have been that the clients were particularly sensitive to this 

because they felt on a less equal footing with the professional. But there did seem 

to be little attempt to explain to a family what was being done with them in a way 

that they understood. All these points seem to be ones of what Miss Fairbairn would 

call " commonsense " and would appear essential for achieving social work objec


tives. As Noel Timms has pointed out, although social work " activity has been 

described as the attempt to cure through talk," . .. "language does not occupy a 

central place in social work and social workers themselves appear indifferent to its 

significance." (Language of social casework, pp 1-2, Routledge and Kegan Paul). 

When he was interviewing fatherless families on assistance in two towns 

in 1965-66, Dennis Marsden asked them about the help that they received from 

social . services. Most seemed to have had little knowledge of where they could 

have gone for help and others were often dissatisfied with the advice they received. 

One separated wife whose husband was mentally ill and alcoholic went to a Citizen's 

Advice Bureau and was told "'Men are funny things you know. You've got to 

give in to them, you've got to humour them.' ' You can go back to him ' she said 

' I'm not so fussed for a man as you are.' " Of course, this was a voluntary worker 

who had only received a very brief preliminary training but it should be pointed 

out that the customer will not necessarily be aware of this -or regard it as a 

sufficient explanation. Besides one must face the fact that only a small proportion of 
I all social workers are trained. A probation officer told one woman " Oh, I've got 
far more important things to do than listen to marriage arguments " (D. Marsden, 
Mothers alone: fatherless families in poverty, Alien Lane Press, Penguin). 

Maybe these accounts were exaggerations. Indeed it is very tempting to dismiss 
all such remarks for one reason or another and very easy-perhaps too easy-
to present convincing psychological grounds to explain apparent resentment of 
help given. What we need to know in undertaking a re-ordering of existing pro-
r grammes is how representative and accurate these accounts are . . There are 
admittedly two sides to what happens in any encounter. But the client's recollection 
and definition of the situation is important in determining both the effectiveness of 
services and the extent to which she is likely to make further use of them, 

r or recommend others to do so. 

In both studies the low status of those applying for advice or help seemed very 
relevant to the trea>tment they received. Perry Levinson has also emphasised the 
importance of the inequality in the relationship between the socia!l worker and his 
clients. It is important, he argues, to study not just the relationship between two 
people, but between two people occupying often very different positions in the 
~ social structure, and meeting in a social organisation which has certain specific 
powers and which expecits certain sorts of behaviour from those to whom it pro:vides 
help. (Chronic dependency : a conceptual analysis, us Department of Health, 1964). 


4. manpower: quantity,
ualifications and distribution 
Clearly any reorganisation of the social workers' services must take into account 
the manpower available, its level of qualification and its distribution across the\ 
country. 

According to the Seebohm committee's definition of social workers, there were over 
11,000 social workers in 1967 employed in the local authority services for children, 
mental heahh and welfare, the probation service and the hospital services. Nearly 
two in five were professionally qualified but the same proportion of practising social 
workers in those agencies had neither a qualification nor a declaration of recognition\ 
of ex.Perience. The estimate of one in two trained by 1975 looked optimistic at the 
best of times: after the cuts in central and local government expenditure it looks ' 
even 'less likely. 

'f.he proportion of these workers with professional q uaHfications was highest in 
the probation service (69 per cent) and the hospital services (62 per cent). About 1 
a third were professionally qualified among full-time field officers in the children's 
department. and among senior offic~rs in the mental he~th services. Fo~ the r~st I the proportiOn was lower than one m five and only one m ten of non-semor social 
workers in the welfare departments were fuHy qualified. (Appendix M, p 336). 

In addition to these there were another 100,000 workers, both manual and non-
manual, employed in the services reviewed by Seebohm and very few of these 
had any social work training. Among those services with most qualified workers 
were the residential staff in children's homes and nurseries of whom one in four 
(out of 5,600) were trained. Tthere were of course those with other forms of training 
including the 2,400 medical officers or school medical officers with medical training, 
and those working as home nurses, school nurses, domiciliary midwives or health 
visitors-over 20,000 in all-who had at least a basic nursing training, if not as 
in most cases a further qualification. The largest group, excluding residential staff, 
were some 30,000 home helps working under nearly nine hundred or-ganizers. 
(Appendix L, p 329). 

To obtain a comprehensive total of those in the social work field one should add 
some 1500 fuH time and 4000 part time youth ·leaders and the many trained and 
untrained, paid and unpaid, full ~ime and part time workers in Citizens Advice 
Bureaux, Family Service Units, Marriage Guidance Councils, the WRVS, the 
churches, community associations and many other organisations. The community 
workers were under study by the Gul1benkian committee under Dame Eileen Young-
husband and the voluntary workers by the committee headed by Miss Geraldine 
Aves. Nevertheless it was a pity that the Seebohm committee did not provide a 
comprehensive analysis of workers in the social services, both statutory and 
voluntary. It is unrealistic to plan for expansion without taking all the social work l 


1roanpower into consideration. Shortage of workers is stressed throughout the 
Seebohm Report; for example, " It is clear that there is no hope in the foreseeable 
future of offering conventional psychiatric or social person to person service to 
all adults or children who are seriously maladjusted " (para 344) and " the entire 
social work staff now availa:ble to many local authorities could be usefully occupied 
solely in trying to support patients (suffering from severe mental disorder); helping 
them, their families and local committees to readjust " (para 346). 

the curious desire for more and professional shortages 

Despite our lack of clear knowledge about what social workers do and what they 
\achieve, we st1H want more of them. " It is an interesting and often overlooked 
fact that, during the last twenty years, whenever the British people have identified 
and investigated a social problem, there has followed a national call for more social 
\workers" (R. M. Titmuss, Commitment to welfare, p 85, Alien and Unwin, 1968 
compare G. Steiner, Social insecurity : the politics of welfare, p 20, Rand McNally, 
Chicago, 1966, for a similar comment on events in the United States). No matter 
how intense the criticism of the services, the need for more trained sociaJ workers 

\is unquestioned: more training and smaller caseloads remain the constant ideals. 
Both countries have experienced a constant shortage of social workers for many 
years. 

Estimations and perceptions, or at least assumptions of shortage are common in 
the professions and can be determined by factors suoh as the changing pace of 
1science with its new demands, the recognition of new needs, higher public expectations 
of the quality of services, the existence or creation of national structures with 
I publicized personnel norms, a high rate of dropout of trainees, a hi_gh turnover 
of staff and perhaps the brevity of a professional career, particularly among women, 
the reduction of the work week, the employment of professional workers on" nonprofessional 
" duties such as administration. Many factors, therefore, in addition 


(to the methods of utilization, affect perceptions of shortage for any occupational 
or professional group. 

Acute shortages of trained workers have not been confined to the social work 
profession alone. In the nursing profession, for example, both Grea:t Britain and 
the United States report an acute shortage of nurses; yet these two countries have 
two of the world's most favourable ratio of graduate nurses to population and 
the number of nurses has been increasing much faster than the populations in 
both countries. Indeed Glaser reports tha't " some graduate nursing officers of WHO 
-concerned with ~he practical service needs of countries and acclimatised to 
judging the actual problems of countries on the basis of objective statistics instead 
of national self-evaluations-do not think that Great Britain and America actually 


19 
are short of nurses." (WiHiam A. Glaser in F. Davis (ed), The nursing profession, 
pp32-33, Wiley, New York, 1966). 
As Glaser points out, " occupations dedicated to the public service ... usually 
seek more recruits and complain about shortages. These occupations are concerned 
with solving society's problems as defined by their own expert judgements, and 
the number of problems that exist (or that they think exist) invariably outruns the 
manpower. The incumbents have a vested interest in expansion: their social prestige 
rises as the popularity of their career grows, particularly among the ablest members 
of society." (ibid p 31). A very important factor determining demand may be the 
activity of the profession itself. " The national call for more social workers " 
referred to above seems very often to have been created, at least in part, by social 
workers and administrators. Indeed Titmuss' " British people " may well be the 
representatives of the profession, strengthened by those who do not want to trans-
form the structure of society, but only the means of accommodating "problem 
groups " to the rest of society. 
The public and private reaction .of the vested interests to the Seebohm report 
cannot but heighten anxiety that a major function of the report has been to 
strengthen the position of the profession and of admin•istrators. The committee' 
itself consisted essentially of the various vested interests particularly from the 
National Institute of Social Work Training, the staff college of the social work 
profession. By the end it could be said to be represented by its chairman, its prin-
cipal, one of its lecturers and perhaps too its president's wife-four out of ten. 
geographical inequalities in services 
One of the shortcomings of the social services and social work provision is the very 
uneven distribution of social workers across the country. This was well docu-I 
mented for some workers in the Seebohm report in Appendix G but it was given 
little attention in the body of the report. A strong argument for central government 
control is provided by this unevenness and Seebohm admits that the need for such 1 
control was argued " particularly clearly and forcefully " by an unspecified group 
of social workers, " the thought behind it •was that the needs of the community 
would be better served by a comprehensive service, and that for administrative and 
financial reasons the present local authority structure would be inadequate to bear 
the weight of the service required" (para 137). The committee however gave this 
•suggestion only one paragraph's discussion, mainly, apparently, because they 
understood their terms of reference as "implying that the services in question 
should remain the responsibility of local govevnment." This at least is debatable but 
the committee apparently regarded the description "local authority ... services" 
in the terms of reference also as a prescription on its work. 
19 
are short of nurses." (WiHiam A. Glaser in F. Davis (ed), The nursing profession, 
pp32-33, Wiley, New York, 1966). 
As Glaser points out, " occupations dedicated to the public service ... usually 
seek more recruits and complain about shortages. These occupations are concerned 
with solving society's problems as defined by their own expert judgements, and 
the number of problems that exist (or that they think exist) invariably outruns the 
manpower. The incumbents have a vested interest in expansion: their social prestige 
rises as the popularity of their career grows, particularly among the ablest members 
of society." (ibid p 31). A very important factor determining demand may be the 
activity of the profession itself. " The national call for more social workers " 
referred to above seems very often to have been created, at least in part, by social 
workers and administrators. Indeed Titmuss' " British people " may well be the 
representatives of the profession, strengthened by those who do not want to trans-
form the structure of society, but only the means of accommodating "problem 
groups " to the rest of society. 
The public and private reaction .of the vested interests to the Seebohm report 
cannot but heighten anxiety that a major function of the report has been to 
strengthen the position of the profession and of admin•istrators. The committee' 
itself consisted essentially of the various vested interests particularly from the 
National Institute of Social Work Training, the staff college of the social work 
profession. By the end it could be said to be represented by its chairman, its prin-
cipal, one of its lecturers and perhaps too its president's wife-four out of ten. 
geographical inequalities in services 
One of the shortcomings of the social services and social work provision is the very 
uneven distribution of social workers across the country. This was well docu-I 
mented for some workers in the Seebohm report in Appendix G but it was given 
little attention in the body of the report. A strong argument for central government 
control is provided by this unevenness and Seebohm admits that the need for such 1 
control was argued " particularly clearly and forcefully " by an unspecified group 
of social workers, " the thought behind it •was that the needs of the community 
would be better served by a comprehensive service, and that for administrative and 
financial reasons the present local authority structure would be inadequate to bear 
the weight of the service required" (para 137). The committee however gave this 
•suggestion only one paragraph's discussion, mainly, apparently, because they 
understood their terms of reference as "implying that the services in question 
should remain the responsibility of local govevnment." This at least is debatable but 
the committee apparently regarded the description "local authority ... services" 
in the terms of reference also as a prescription on its work. 

\ Apart from the recommendations for special " priority areas for community 
development" or "socia'l development areas" (paras 485-490), akin to Plowden's 
"educational priority areas" and the "areas of special housing need" advocated 
by the National CornmiHee for Commonwealth Immigrants, the Seebohm Committee 
does not make any specific proposals for rectifying the unequal geographical 
1 distribution of social workers and social services. Yet a better national coverage is 
essential if an effective family service is really to be made "availa'ble for all." 
This wider problem is discussed in part of one paragraph (490) and in the summary, 
at the end of the proposals for areas of special needs, the committee states " Central 
and local government, with the professions themselves, must accept responsibility 
for securing a better distribution of staff over the country as a whole " (p 230). 

In 1962 local authorities' own estimates of their needs for social workers by 1972 
varied widely, from 5 to 28 per 100,000 population in county boroughs and from 
2 to 20 per 100,000 among the counties. Overall this represented an increase of 
66 per cent over the ten years, from 2,940 to 4,880. In trying to estimate the need 
for trained staff, Paige and J ones decided that " needs are so various that a comprehensive 
estimate on the basis of num'bers needing help would be impossible." 

(D. Paige and K. Jones, Health and welfare services in Britain in 1975, p 111, 
Cambridge University Press, 1966). As an alternative therefore they grouped local 
authorities with broadly similar social and economic characteristics together and 
est•imated the provision that would be needed if the plans of all authorities were 
raised to the level of those 20 per cent in each group aiming at the most liberal 
facilities. This would mean an increase of not 66 per cent by 1972 but 145 per cent, 
giving a total of 7,200 social workers in the health and welfare services, almost 
half as many again as the loca·l authorities' own estimates (ibid, p 112-113. Welfare 
assistants are omitted from the calculations in this paragraph and the next to 
enable comparison between reports). 
The latest revised estimates of the local authorities s~ill fall far short of that 
suggested by Paige and J ones. Although the estimates are markedly higher, because 
of encouraging recruitment figures, the forecast requirements for 1975 put forward 
in 1965 are still only 6,403. The need of 7,600 estimated by Paige and Jones for 
that year is still20 per cent above that of the local authorities (Health and welfare: 
the development of community care, revision to 1975-76 of plans for the health 
and welfare services of the local authorities in England and Wales, p 14, cmnd 3022, 
HMSO, 1966). 

the u~e of social workers 

l Quite clearly local authorities' own forecasts are main·ly an extrapolation of t!heir 
own present manpower. Very little attention has been given to the basic questions 


of the utilisation and deployment of trained and untrained staff, and the advantages I 
that derive from the combination of different levels and types of staff. At least one 
body concerned with professional training, however, is worried about "an overemphasis 
of the manpower needs of the •service at the expense of the educational 
needs of the profession." 

Dame Eileen Y ounghusband,for many years a leader of the social work profession, 
has •insistentJy argued for greater attention to the actual use of social workers. She 
said v,ery forcefully in 1951: "Sufficient attention has been given to the qualifications 
which employing bodies ' should ' require in comparison with the quite 
insufficient attention given to the much more pressing problem of how, in the I 
present extreme shortage, trained and qualified •workers can 'be used to ft!he best I 
advantage . . . and the job itself 'be •so analysed and broken down that sledgehammers 
are not wasted in cracking nuts, nor personal problems mishandled by 
the incompetent." (Social work in Britain, p 28, Carnegie UK Trust, 1951 emphasis 
added). 

This demand was expressed clearly and vigorously again in the report of the committee 
she chaired from 1955 to 1959, and she stressed the urgency for this once 
more in 1965 ("A comparative view of manpower problems: the British approach," 
Social service review, pp 454-458, 1965). 

But there is as yet, to my knowledge, no detailed analysis of the use of qualified) 
as opposed to unqualified workers. The general impression is that the higher the 
training, the higher up the career structure the worker starts and the faster he 
climbs it. The less trained therefore are most likely to make the first and continuing1 
contact with clients. This paradox deserves emphasis. Better training is advocated 
because it equips one best for the current dominant professional activity of casework. 
Yet it seems that the general trend is for the better trained to have 
less contact with clients or customers, to have the greater administrative respon-l 
sibilities, and so have less opportunity for practising the skills they have •been taught. 
The extent to which this is compensated for by senior workers acting as supervisors 
or by providing in-service training is not clear and certainly deserves closer exam


ination. At the best, at present, this is simply assumed to be so. 

the use of time 

With an inadequate provision and distribution of trained staff and a lack of facilities 
to increase the supply of trained staff fast enough, it is important to study the ways 
in which social workers deploy their own work·ing hours. The 1959 Younghusband 
report found that one-t'hird of the average working time of a heterogeneous body 
of field workers was spent on" letter-writing, record-keeping or other administrative/ 


procedures," one-fifth in travelling and about one-third to one-half in direct contact 
[with the client. (para 397). 

A more detailed study of the child care service ·in seven Scottish local authority 
departments in 1960 found that the social workers spent less time than they 
estimated on what they regarded as their major functions and more time than 
they thought on other activities. One quarter of the time was spent travelling, one-
third on administration and one-third on paper work. In contrast preventive work 
only took up one-tenth of the time, children being received into care a'bsori>ing the 
greatest amoun1t of work. Less than 2 hours a week was spent with children and 
only about one hour in conversation with them, including chats on journeys. " It 
seems that the professional worker's conception of his job involves a much greater 
application to the casework and therapeuDic aspects of the service than his situation 
allows." (T. Burns and S. Sinclair, The child care service at work, p 42, Scottish 
Education Department, Edinburgh, 1963). 

A study of newly-qualified medical social workers found that they spent between 
a third and a half of their time on work which did not require professional training 
either in their view or that of their heads of department (E. M. Moon and K. M. 
Slack, The first two years, Institute of Medical Social Workers, 1965). Similar 
findings emerged from a study of the medical sooial work department at the 
Hammersmith Hospita·l (Z. Butrym, Medical social work in action, Bell 1968). It 
was agreed that an administrative or welfare assistant could in fact handle this 
work just as efficiently with considerable saving of resources, especially the time 
of trained staff. 

Analysis of the working time of other professionals outside social work might well 
lead to similar conclusions but this does not weaken the significance of such findings. 
(First, the demands placed on workers distracting them, so to speak, from the job 
they are employed, trained and publicly and professionally expected to do, can 
1lead to acute dissatisfaction, increase the turnover rate, result in long and irregular 
hours and generally lower standards of efficiency. Yet the extent of these non(
professional demands are often not recognised •by those outside the work-group, 
leading to conflict between the workers and administrators. (see John Haines, 

"Satisfaction in social work," New Society, 5 January 1967). 

(In the end the major sufferers are the c!Jients and those would-be clients who are 
not seen because of the 'lack of time. The workers have insufficient time to explain 
to clients what ·is happening or just to listen to them. Often secretarial staff, not only 
unqualified rbut inexperienced, are left to hold the fort and bear the brunt of many 
initial tension-ridden contac~s with a department. In addition, when workers do 
fall ill or leave, it is often the poorest areas of a town that go longest without a 


replacement, workers being transferred to fiH gaps elsewhere. In one local authority 1 
I was told by other sooiai workers that the most " Jnadequate " social workers 
were most likely to be dumped in 1he slum areas. As one man put it "If you let 
him loose in a respectable area, the office would be inundated with complaints." 
Once again the poor are the losers. 1 

The very important role played by office staff, even when completely untrained, 
has been revealed in a num'ber of sociological studies of organisations. Receptionists 
in an,American state employment exchange exercised considerable discretion in 
handling applicants for work, although they were only clerical employees and formal 
criteria which circumscribed their powers had been very carefully laid down. Their 
function was to limit the flow of applicants for jobs, and their code of procedures 
laid down the date on which they should tell applicants to return (P. M. Blau, 
The dynamics of bureaucracy, pp 28-34 and 87-90, Chicago University press, 
revised edit,ion, 1963). In another American study the application clerk in an urban 
housing department _exercised considerable control over whether or not those 
coming in to her desk were eventuaHy found the equivalent of a council house; 
in fact some would-be applicants never got further than her desk. " Whether or 

' not the prospective applicant becomes an eligible applicant, whevher or not the 
eligible applicant can hope 1o become a tenant, and in which project he is most 
likely to become a tenant-all of these depend, in large pa·rt, upon 1he impression 
he makes on the gatekeeper at the initial con1act." (I. Deutscher "The gatekeeper 
in public housing," Among the people: encounters with the urban poor, p 40, Basic 
Books, New York, 1968). · 


5. recommendations 
for policy 
So far I have tried to point out the deficiencies in our knowledge about the practice 
of social work, the strengths and weaknesses that we do know, the conflict and 
uncertainty over what social workers should be doing and the anxiety that many, 
for one reason or another, are at present becoming more agents of social control 

1 

1than of social welfare. Clearly we need better inform~tion and a wider and more 
vigorous debate about the role of social workers and the social services in Britain. 
But while the debating and data-collecting continue, decisions have to be taken 
now on the existing evidence, meagre as lit is, and on the basis of current ideas 
and accumulated experience. These decisions may well shape the nature and distribution 
of the practice of social work for many years to _come. 

re-deployment and substitutability 

The government must take hard, and probably professionally unpopular, decisions 
about the redeployment and substitutabiLity of workers in different services and 

1 at different levels. This is what Dame Eileen Y ounghusband has been demanding 
at least since 1951. 

With scarce resources how do we deploy our social workers? The evidence suggests 
that we should employ more home helps, welfare assistants and auxiliaries and 
\ extend this part of the service much faster than ·tlhe numbers of fully qualified 
social workers. At once we are led into difficult and sensitive areas where one has 
to weigh the values of one service against another. This of course is a familiar 
(problem for the professions : a major question in the field of medicine is the allocation 
of resources and personnel to what can be crudely differentiated as curative 
and prevent,ive medicine. In fact in both the medical and social work professions 
those more involved in curative work have tended to have higher pay and status 

1 
and greater power and influence. Only when they agree has it usually been possible 
to increase less skilled staff (compare also the teaching profession's reaction to 
teaching aides). 

problems of professional demarcation 

Every doctor, social worker, teacher and nurse in this country is well aware of 
the disruptive effect on the economy of semi-skilled manual workers arguing for 
weeks as to who drills the hole. Isn't it ridiculous? I mean I can drill a hole; can't 
you? Does it matter who drills it ? Why can'<t the trade unions learn to live in peace 
-like us? The truth is that the country has been constantly held to ransom by the 
professions and the so-called professions-and the costs of the ransom have been 

\ paid most heavily by those least equipped to pay. 

Amongst the professions public disputes are usually avoided. There is a gentleman's 


agreement that " dog does not bite dog " supported by nicely-phrased terms of 
reference and by professional decorum. Each report, public or private, on a profession 
therefore does not rock the boat -the Royal Commission on Medical 
Education, the (Salmon) Report of the Committee on Senior Nursing Staff Structure 
and now Seebohm and even Gul'benkian. Each report in its own blinkered way 
bears out the wisdom and insight of Everett Huglhes when he writes about the 
professions, and the way in which the rest of society pays increasing heed to them. 
Each establishes a little widerJlre professional empire. 

The Royal Commission on Medical Education, for example, does not include 
nurses in its index and even the few references in the text pay relatively slight 
attention to the ways in which their deployment affects the demand for medical 
staff. The four indexed references to social workers show equal neglect of the 
potential contribution that can be made by these workers either inside or outside 
hospitals that would have implications for the use of scarce medical staff, and indeed 
two of the references seem concerned simply to differentiate the roles of doctors 
and social workers. 

the potential benefits of job-analysis 

The possibilities therefore for redeployment are handicapped, first by our lack of \ 
knowledge about what workers with different levels and types of skills do and 
achieve, and second by the resistance to transferring responsibilities out of one's 1 
own jurisdiction, if it involves professional rivalries. Yet the actual responsibilities 
of professionally qualified social workers include much that might be allocated 
to others. There appear to be strong grounds for a reorganisation of the types of 
work carried out and for more emphasis, and increased recognition and status, 
to be given to the roles of welfare assistant, information officer, administrative 
assistant, home help and home help organiser and so on. 

A recent survey of thirteen local authority areas of the services for the elderly 
concluded that in most areas " the home help serv.ice and housing programme~ 
could be at least doubled without resulting in overprovision." (A. I. Harris, Social 
welfare for the elderly, Government Socia-l Survey, vol 1, p 65, HMSO 1968). This 
conclusion did not allow for any .increase in the ·time home helps provided the 
elderly, nor for the vast expansion of home help numbers if my suggestion is accepted. 
A lot could be done to enable social workers to meet the community's needs 

•by job-analysis. Faced with a demand for a 25 per cent increase ·in its nursing staff, 
some eight or nine times the generally allowed national increase, one local authority 
analysed the work of the nursing staff. By stepping up the number of home-helps, 
they were a:ble to meet the demand which had in fact genuinely increased : the excess 
demand for nursing staff was due to nurses lighting fires, doing shopping and much 

of the work that is usually done by home helps. The displacement of low-

j 
skill tasks to lower-paid workers may usually be made :acceptable to the higher-
trained, provided that other differentials are maintained and the work displaced 
is of lower status. Dirty work is conventionaUy low status (although, as occupational 
sociologists point out, dirty work ·is all r.ight provided it is accompanied by high 
status and high pay, the surgeon providing a particularly good example). 

early and easy contact 

The detailed study of substitutability and interchange in the social service 
occupations and professions should be combined with the problem of how the 
customer is enabled to reach services that have a tendency to withdraw into the 
tconfines of bureaucratic organisation. Here the ·roles of the general practitioner, 
the health visitor, the supplementary benefits officer and the police in the community, 
\ the nurse in the hospital and the teacher in the school are of vital importance. 
These are the people aiready best placed to inform people of their rights and to 
recognise unmet needs. The health visitor is a particularly good example of a 
relatively low status-though highly-1:rained-worker who can play a tremendous 
role in alerting consumers of the services available. Unfortunately the current trend 
seems to move away from these people in either direction-;-towards "grass roots " 

organisations on the one hand, and towards large co-ordinated social units on the 
other. Here too "lower-grade" workers like home helps or voluntary visitors 
can achieve a great deal. Over one-quarter of a million people live in institutions • 
and they become all too easily isolated from the rest of the community. Untrained 

l workers can help many of these residents, especially ensuring that they do not 
become isolated from the benefits and services available to the rest of the com


1 

munity. An extension of workers such as home-helps and welfare assistants could 

I enable many people to stay in thei·r own homes in their own community (see E. 
Shanas et al, op cit, Peter Townsend, The last refuge, and Jeremy Tunstall, Old 
and alone, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966). 

the nurse-social worker in the hospital and the community 

A more radical suggestion may be made for the employment of nurse-social workers 
who could not only improve the quality of services available to the patient and his 
family while he is in hospital but could do much •to break down the gap between · 
hospital and community that makes a mockery of many of the pretentious of 
community care programmes. Often hospital nurses unequipped with social work 
knowledge have to deal with social work problems. The comfort of the ill and the 
dying, the giving of information to the patient and his family, particularly the 
diagnosis of an illness with little hope of recovery or which will mean great adjustments 
both for the patient and his family-these are all tasks that many nurses 


have to undertake. Yet they receive very little, if any, training that equips them \ 
for this work, which is very demanding and imposes a considerable strain on many. 
Once again this raises the important question of what happens to the people who 
need social work help but do not receive it, or at least not from the appointed\ 
worker, whether trained or not. Careful analysis of the work actually done by 
medical social workers might enable much of value to be incorporated in the 
training of nurses. Ward sisters complain about the appointment of part-time 
medical social workers who handle "their" problems on Mondays but have to 
leave the sister or a junior nurse to manage these same problems for the rest of 
the week. (Some social workers sometimes talk of the ignorance of nurses 
without any awareness of the extent to which their awn type of work is being carried 
out by this generally lower-paid and lower-status occupation). Much could be 
achieved by providing nurses with some of the knowledge necessary to handle 1 
these problems with greater ease and effectiveness. 

Already a three-month period in community or home nursing is included in the 
basic training of some twelve groups of pupil nurses and five of student nurses. 
This does not of course equip a nurse for social work but the knowledge of patients 
as people with families living in their homes, and the better appreciation of their 
problems this provides •• makes them more aware of both the need for, and scope 
of, medical social work. There will probably be two benefits for the patient. First, 
the nurse w.iU be more sensitive to the needs of patients and their families and 
better able to understand their anxieties and problems. Secondly, the nurse should 
be better able to realise that a patient has particular problems and would be more 
willing to ·refer patients to medical social workers. 

In providing support for the psychiatric patient with his family at home and at work 
there is already strong support from the Mental Nurses Committee of the General 
Nursing Council for the nurse to take a more adtive part. Any demarcation dispute 
with the psychiatric social worker and the mental welfare officer seems unlikely 
because there are, and will continue to be, insufficient numbers of either worker. 
There is the additional advantage that the nurse may have known a patient as a 
member of the psychiatric ward family for six months, a year or longer and can 
offer help to avert the need for readmission because of the relationship created. 
Out-patient nursing has in fact been provided in Croydon by Warlingham Park 
Hospital since 1954. Qualified mental nurses have been seconded to provide after:
are for patients in the community who can therefore be discharged earlier, to look 

•after patients who may have relapsed and new patients not believed to need 
inpatient 
care (A. R. May and S. Moore, " The mental nurse in the community," 
The lAncet, 26 January 1963). These nurses have not only worked in closer contact 
.vith the community services including social workers but they have themselves 
.mdertaken what might be described as basic social work in providing support 

for the patients, relieving the anxieties of relative by timely explanations and putting 
them in touch with the social services when necessary. 

In hospitals and homes for the mentally subnormal there is an even stronger case 
for nurses playing the role of nurse-social worker. Relatively little physical nursing 
has to be done but much help needs to be provided for the family of the patient, 
and in many cases a trained worker can do much to help the patient's progress. 
The significance of the part that could be played by nurses with some quite basic 
training is revealed by a recent study of thirty-four institutions for the mentally 
subnormal. Over half rhe patients were in institutions without social workers and 
none of the twenty-two employed had a full professional qualification and nine 
had neither training of any type nor any previous experience. This indicates, 
incidentally, the -low status given such jobs by trained social workers. (Pauline 
Morris, Caring for the subnormal: a sociological study of institutions for the 
mentally subnormal, PhD thesis, University of Essex, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 
forthcoming). Surprisingly a textbook on social work with the mentally subnormal 
pays no attention to the nurses beyond an occasional reference to " skilled nursing " 
although there are a number of references to doctors. 'Jlhe author does not point out 
the very small amount of medical care received by the mentally subnormal. (iF. 
Joan Todd, Social work with the mentally subnormal. Routledge and Kegan Paul). 
It seems likely that the greater involvement of the nurses with the patients and their 
families would do much to develop the understanding of the nurses and improve 
their own view of their role and the importance of t'heir work. It would also help 
to promote links with the community outside the institution and help to break down 
the barrier that seems to be so much greater for many of these institutions. This 
sharing of social work knowledge could also be of value for the teaching profession. 

the medical social worker in the community 

;fhe .introduction of the nurse-social worker would enable a greater provision of 
'medical social workers for general practice, particularly Health Centres. Since 
" perhaps 90 per cent of all illness " that comes to the notice of the medical profession 
is dealt with " entirely within the amlbit of general practice " (Royal Commission 
on medical education, para 325, HMSO 1968), both preventive and curative 
work of great value could presumably be provided by social workers at this point. 
The interim report of the Caversham project in Camden suggests the great value 
of the role that may be played by a social worker based in a group practice. 

While increasing success seems to be achieved by medical social work units outside 
hospitals, many social workers in the hospitals still encounter considera:ble difficulties 
in reaching the pat ients when they are needed, essentially because of a lack of an 
efficient referral system as well as a shortage of workers full time in many hospitals, 


or their employment on work not needing a fully trained social worker. 
It seems unlikely that medical socia'l workers in hospitals can overcome the barriers 
fairly then very quickly, even where they are relatively highly concentrated. And 
there is still the problem t>ha't many hospitals or hospital units have only a part time 
social worker and some have none at all, as the mental subnormality institutions 
described above. In 1966 rubout one-third of qualified and practising medical social 
workers were concentrated in about one-tenth of the hospitals employing any 
medicaL social workers at all. (My analysis of Institute of Medical Social Workers' 
List of Members, January 1967). It appears .then that every encouragement should 
be given by the government for local authorities to employ medical social workers 
on a much grea'ter scale and appoint them, where possi'ble and appropriate, to 
general practices. Although others may be opposed, the results of research 
so far suggests that this may do much to promote the quality of care for the patient 
and will improve access and provide early contact for those in need of social 
workers' help. 
'social work training 
Many of Seebohm's recommendations about training should be implemented as 
soon as possible, and their 'basic emphasis is repeated in the Gul'benkian committee's 
report on Community work and social change. It is important that social workers \ 
should in their training learn more about group and community work and more ' 
about the dynamics of society and social change. But too much stress must not again 
be placed on teaching new techniques, skills and methods of manipulation of the 
::lient-whether it be individual, family, group or community. 
Social workers need to know more atbout the intricacies of the rent acts and of rent 1 
rebate schemes and much more a'bout .the lives of those they have to serve. In 
:heir training at present their contact ouside the worker-client setting with what 
:me might describe as the population at risk of being clients is very limited. Essen-
:ially they need to be alble to develop during training a view of their role as servants r 
)f the community with responsibilities that are more socially-oriented. 
:he teaching of "human relations" 
1\.t the same time the experience of social workers should be spread as widely) 
ts possible throughout the community. Knowing more about the way people react 
o crises, illness, disability or handicap, to material or emotional problems will help 
tll servants of the pu'blic in front-line organisations to cope with their own impulses 
md reactions and will lessen the strain and tension under which the majority of 
hem have to work. 11his knowledge should not be jealously guarded and kept 
or their employment on work not needing a fully trained social worker. 
It seems unlikely that medical socia'l workers in hospitals can overcome the barriers 
fairly then very quickly, even where they are relatively highly concentrated. And 
there is still the problem t>ha't many hospitals or hospital units have only a part time 
social worker and some have none at all, as the mental subnormality institutions 
described above. In 1966 rubout one-third of qualified and practising medical social 
workers were concentrated in about one-tenth of the hospitals employing any 
medicaL social workers at all. (My analysis of Institute of Medical Social Workers' 
List of Members, January 1967). It appears .then that every encouragement should 
be given by the government for local authorities to employ medical social workers 
on a much grea'ter scale and appoint them, where possi'ble and appropriate, to 
general practices. Although others may be opposed, the results of research 
so far suggests that this may do much to promote the quality of care for the patient 
and will improve access and provide early contact for those in need of social 
workers' help. 
'social work training 
Many of Seebohm's recommendations about training should be implemented as 
soon as possible, and their 'basic emphasis is repeated in the Gul'benkian committee's 
report on Community work and social change. It is important that social workers \ 
should in their training learn more about group and community work and more ' 
about the dynamics of society and social change. But too much stress must not again 
be placed on teaching new techniques, skills and methods of manipulation of the 
::lient-whether it be individual, family, group or community. 
Social workers need to know more atbout the intricacies of the rent acts and of rent 1 
rebate schemes and much more a'bout .the lives of those they have to serve. In 
:heir training at present their contact ouside the worker-client setting with what 
:me might describe as the population at risk of being clients is very limited. Essen-
:ially they need to be alble to develop during training a view of their role as servants r 
)f the community with responsibilities that are more socially-oriented. 
:he teaching of "human relations" 
1\.t the same time the experience of social workers should be spread as widely) 
ts possible throughout the community. Knowing more about the way people react 
o crises, illness, disability or handicap, to material or emotional problems will help 
tll servants of the pu'blic in front-line organisations to cope with their own impulses 
md reactions and will lessen the strain and tension under which the majority of 
hem have to work. 11his knowledge should not be jealously guarded and kept 

locked up with the professionally qualified worker in a room all too often guarded 
by a completely untrained receptionist. 

This is not to say that we should all become social workers, but it is to argue that 
social workers' knowledge is not just commonsense. An understanding of human 

l 
behaviour in health, illness and crisis is valuable for these staff workers. The Royal 
Commission on Medical Education argued for doctors, " all students should be 
taught to recognise the effects of their own behaviour upon orhers" and they should 
have some knowledge of " the social and cultural factors which influence patients' 
response." (paras 254 and 257). This seems equally true for all workers in the 
social services. 

Eugene Heimler has done much to pioneer courses providing such training. The 
help that Heimler was able to give National Assistance recipients in Hendon who 
had been out of work for at Ieast two years and were thought by officers to have 
serious emotional problems shows what can be achieved by a social caseworker 

(E. Heimler, Mental illness and social work, chap 7, Penguin, 1967). But the particular 
significance of the Hendon experiment is that it took social work knowledge 
out into the community. With Heimler''s help the National Assistance Board began 
in 1958 to provide a part time training course for their executive officers related 
to the practical day-to-day work of officers. " One of its important aims was not 
only to impart knowledge about human relations and family behaviour, but also 
to allow the members to see their own prejudices and reactions to ~heir clients in 
a new light." (ibid, p 144). These courses have had great success. The reactions of 
the officers " as expressed on paper read, in fact, so much like testimonials for a 
patent medicine that the scepticism which fills the heart of all administrators was 
overflowing." (K. R. Stowe, "Staff training in the National Assistance Board: 
problems and policies," Public Administration, Winter 1961). By 1964 some seventeen 
universities were providing " Human Relations " courses and similar part time 
training programmes have rbeen introduced for employment exchange officials and 
certain local authority staff. 
training for the doorkeepers 

The Seebohm report does not make any reference to this work. It does, however, 
\briefly acknowledge the need for some training at all levels in the social service 
departments. " It would be a great mistake to concen'trate on the training of field 
social workers and senior administrative officers and to forget . . . that the whole 
organisation will depend among other things on an efficient and sympathetic telephone 
service" (para 529). The rest of the chapter on training however, makes 
scant reference to such problems. The training of the receptionists or telephonists 
gains added importance if departments are to be co-ordinated. As shown earlier, 


these workers can do much to determine not only the initial attitude o£ an incomer ~ 
lo a department but also the way .in which the client is eventually treated. It is 
vital that these workers should have a good knowledge of the services available at 
their office which can save the customer considerable time, for example waiting in 
vain for an interview higher up or having to repeat one's story unnecessarily. This 
is of immense significance to a woman with three boisterous and fidgety young 
children with her or who has left them with a neighbour and is anxious about 
exhausting her good-will. Such workers should also have some basic knowledge of\ 
human .relations that will enable them to put visitors at their ease and to cope with 
particularly anxious, excitable or even aggressive visitors. 
These courses could well be extended to many others working in organisations 
involving contact with the pulblic such as the police, employment exchange officers 
and of course the nurses whose possible new role I described above. 
the emphasis on "social'' work 
In the courses for all levels of workers, additional emphasis must be placed on the~ 
social aspect of the social workers' job which has been so much neglected. ~he 
responsibility of the servant to his customer and the community needs to be 
clearly established and the conflicts that will often ensue be admitted 
and discussed. Social workers of course are not the only public servants who have 
tended to forget their responsibility to the individual, the family and the community 
in their concern to avoid offending their employer or the apparently much dreaded f 
"tax-payer," but they are among the highest-trained and best-paid to do so. It is 
all the more sad in their case because of the stress in their ideology on meeting 
the individual needs of their clients. 
THE ROLE OF A SOCIAL WORKER 
Earlier I put forward a tentative definition of the role of the social worker. If his 
work is going to meet these requirements, then it is important that he should be 
able to act as a social investigator, and as a mediator and interpreter. 
the social worker as social investigator 
[n 1920 Clement Attlee described "social investigation" as " a particular form of 
;ocial work" (The social worker, Bell, London). "It is not possible," he said, "for 
:he ordinary rank and file of social workers to hope to rival skilled investigators, but 
~ach one can take his part by cultivating habits of careful observation and analysis 
)f the pieces of social machinery that come under his notice." (p 230). No-one 
~an foresee all the effects, direct and indirect, of any change in policy and therefore 
these workers can do much to determine not only the initial attitude o£ an incomer ~ 
lo a department but also the way .in which the client is eventually treated. It is 
vital that these workers should have a good knowledge of the services available at 
their office which can save the customer considerable time, for example waiting in 
vain for an interview higher up or having to repeat one's story unnecessarily. This 
is of immense significance to a woman with three boisterous and fidgety young 
children with her or who has left them with a neighbour and is anxious about 
exhausting her good-will. Such workers should also have some basic knowledge of\ 
human .relations that will enable them to put visitors at their ease and to cope with 
particularly anxious, excitable or even aggressive visitors. 
These courses could well be extended to many others working in organisations 
involving contact with the pulblic such as the police, employment exchange officers 
and of course the nurses whose possible new role I described above. 
the emphasis on "social'' work 
In the courses for all levels of workers, additional emphasis must be placed on the~ 
social aspect of the social workers' job which has been so much neglected. ~he 
responsibility of the servant to his customer and the community needs to be 
clearly established and the conflicts that will often ensue be admitted 
and discussed. Social workers of course are not the only public servants who have 
tended to forget their responsibility to the individual, the family and the community 
in their concern to avoid offending their employer or the apparently much dreaded f 
"tax-payer," but they are among the highest-trained and best-paid to do so. It is 
all the more sad in their case because of the stress in their ideology on meeting 
the individual needs of their clients. 
THE ROLE OF A SOCIAL WORKER 
Earlier I put forward a tentative definition of the role of the social worker. If his 
work is going to meet these requirements, then it is important that he should be 
able to act as a social investigator, and as a mediator and interpreter. 
the social worker as social investigator 
[n 1920 Clement Attlee described "social investigation" as " a particular form of 
;ocial work" (The social worker, Bell, London). "It is not possible," he said, "for 
:he ordinary rank and file of social workers to hope to rival skilled investigators, but 
~ach one can take his part by cultivating habits of careful observation and analysis 
)f the pieces of social machinery that come under his notice." (p 230). No-one 
~an foresee all the effects, direct and indirect, of any change in policy and therefore 

it is vital to compare achievement with intention and watch for any side-effects. 
This sort of role is currently being performed, magnificently and, one is often told, 
quite "unprofessionally" by such indiscreet amateurs in Citizens' Advice Bureaux 
as Audrey Harvey who, except in Attlee's sense, is not perhaps a social worker. It 
is interesting, and important, to note that Attlee cites the operation of minimum 
wage legislation as an example of where social workers might keep a watchful eye, 
In fact social workers were instrumental in helping Tawney's study of minimum 
work-rates; but how many social workers today are aware that nearly one in five 
of the establishments inspected by the nation's 140 wage inspectors are paying 
below ·the statutory wage to at least some of their employees? (See the summary of 
statistics published annually in the Employment and Productivity Gazette). Also 
social workers need to be reminded that it was while he was working as a social 
worker at Toynbee Hall that Beveridge produced his seminal and influential work 
on unemployment which remains unrivalled today. This work investigated causes 
and suggested preventives and did not deal only with symptoms and palliatives, 
immediate and temporary. 

This role of social investigation and reporting back of the faults should be a vital 
part of social work today. To quote Attlee once again, "The demand of the social 
reformer today is for a new attitude to social problems rather than for specific 
reforms in any particular department of life." (p 13). This, of course, immediately 
brings into question again the " objective " or " politically neutral " role of the 
social worker and the injection of his own values into his work. 

The major way in which this role can be extended is by providing organisations 
like the Citizens' Advice Bureaux With more resources and better trained staff. They 
have however to make themselves better known to the public and more accessible, 
wirh longer opening hours and often better-placed and more attractive offices. 
There seem to be strong grounds for experimenting with the community shops 
that appear to have been one of the more successful parts of the American action 
programmes. The argument for an independent " consumer shop " is made strongly 
by Lucy Syson and Rosalind Brooke (" The voice of the consumer," More power 

to the people, eds. B. Lapping and G. Radice, Longmans, 1968). 

IThe supportive and feedback role of the social worker can be developed in many 
other ways. Home-helps are particularly well-placed to inform those they visit of the · 
other services available. They should also be encouraged to report when they 
come across those who have needs that cannot be met by the services known to 
them. Only in ways such as these can the services adjust of their own accord to 
meet unmet needs; rather than give away unwillingly, after outside pressure. 
Small-scale research on certain groups is also valuable in disclosing 
where need are not met. A recent small, and relatively inexpensive, study 


revealed the extent of poverty and the extent of ignorance about rights and service\ 
amongst residents in a small area of Liverpool. At the same time it provided valuable 
education to the participants. Interviewing 208 families, analysis of rhe data 
and publication involved some seventy members of the group and provided a 
quick but valua'ble knowledge of the intricacies of social service provision. " By 
the third night of the project, group members who had been slightly bemused by 
the mass of benefits available, were conversing knowledgeably on topics ranging 
from rate rebates to free spectacles." (Peter Moss, Welfare rights project 1968, p 3, 
Merseyside Child Poverty Action Group, February 1969). 

the social worker as mediator and interpreter 

As the organisation of the social services and society in genera'l becomes more 
complex and intricate, many people need help in finding out their rights or just( 
~he alternatives open to them in many complicated situations. Where the social 
worker is easily identifiable and approachable, he can play a very important role 
in interpreting bureaucratic regulations or mediating between a family and some! 
organisation. In some towns at least people will approach the NSPCC officer-" the 
cruelty man "-for advice on many different issues completely unrelated to his job 
-to solve matrimonial disputes, to explain the details of a hire-purchase agreement 
or to persuade a firm to set payments at a lower level, to intervene with a local 
social worker or to settle arguments with the income tax-authorities. (Rodgers and 
Dixon, Portrait of Social Work, p 151, Oxford University Press, 1960, and observed 
by me on Tyneside and in parts of London). And of course such difficulties are 1often raised with the social worker who is visiting a family. 

Once again this involves putting emphasis on the social worker's knowledge of the 
various systems and stresses his willingness to try to find out about such issues when 
asked rather than to refer the questioner onwards. This too is to emphasise the1 
responsibility of the worker to the community rather than to 'his employing organisation: 
it involves a view of social work as a detached counter-profession. This is in 
part ~to put forward an argument for more group and community workers, but it 
is not only these workers that can act as a mediator between the individual and the 
local community and the local or central bureaucracy. Indeed one hopes that one of 
the strengths of greater professionalism among all types of social workers will be 
their greater willingness to stand up on behalf of those .fhey are expected to serve. ( 

the danger of disfranchisement 

Despite this basically optimistic view of the role that the social worker can play, 
it must be admitted that the greater opportunities for promoting welfare mean ) 
greater power. Indeed the ever-growing numbers of social workers and government 


officials that arc in contact with the families, mainly of the working-class, exercise 
a great amount, an increasing amount, of power. As yet the citizen has very little 
\ defence against them. Our ombudsman-the Parliamentary Commissioner-cannot 
intervene in local government decisions nor in the many discretionary decisions 
of public officials. There is the danger that certain sections of the community may 
be disfranchised in the sense that their " social control " is entrusted to the appro


lpriate agency, its administrators and its field workers. 

If one unified social service department is introduced, then the problem of offering tfamilies some protection seems even more urgent. It is unrealistic to argue that 
families do not need such defence: social workers are as fallible as the rest of us 
1and there is always bound to be a variation in quality. One must accept that some 
families' road to hell has been paved with the good intentions of social workers. 
To an extent some right of appeal already exists in bodies such as the Mental 
Health Review Tribunals but they are really best suited for either-or situations: 

hould this man be committed to, or remain in a mental hospital or not? They are 
likely to be of less use in controlling the everyday discretionary actions of social 
workers. One of the critical facts to realise is that a client expects to remain in 
touch with a particular social worker. He is well aware that it will be the same 
caseworker who will continue to take decisions that may affect him vitally. As 
Joel Handler has argued, the client "is beginning to think that in the 'long run' 
it would be 'better' for her family if she agreed with the caseworker." (Joel F. 
Handler, "Controlling official behaviour in welfare administration," in Jacobu 
Ten Broek (ed), The law of the poor, Chandler, San Francisco, 1966). In fact 
it is the power of the worker that may largely nullify in this respect any pro-
gramme of rights. " Before rights can be made effective ... there has to be 
knowledge, ability or resources, and clear, practical advantages for using these 
rights." (ibid, p 171, emphasis in the original) . 

This situation is of cour e one common to the ervice professions and no clear 
solution to it has yet been developed. This however does seem to be a major area 
in which professional development, which would raise the standards expected of a 
worker and would perhaps lay down an ethical code, might benefit the client. This 
will not be solved easily: how in fact can one define "malpractice" in social work? 
But much could be done to indicate the respon ibilities of workers in taking discretionary 
action. (See Kathleen Bell, Tribunals in the social services, Routledge 
and Kegan Paul, 1969). 

Clearly some more formal protection will have to be provided : at the moment 
much of the burden of thi work is accepted by local councillors or local MPS, but 
rsuccess depend very much on the time, energy, resources and personal charm or 
"pull" of the individual. Another ombudsman f r such matter . or a committee 


:o replace the existing Parliamentary Commissioner which would have powers to 
investigate, if necessary, any action of a public employee seems essential. J1he 
opportunity for making complaints should also be made much easier and not be 
dependent upon first convincing one's MP that there are grounds for complaint. 

3 more equal geographical distribution 

None of these developments, changes in emphasis, reforms or attempts to promote 
:tccess or maintain quality will be of much significance if we cannot erisure a mucq 
nore equal distribution of resources-social workers and services-across thd} 
whole country. The type and extent of help families and individuals living in different 
parts of the country receive should not be affected by the accidents of 
residence and historical development or by the poverty in resources, imagination, 
:tdministrative skill, political infighting or simple humanity of their local authority. 
To take a particularly graphic example, Rotherham spends £483 per thousand of 
its population on home helps while Tynemouth, of roughly similar size, spends 
less than £17 (Jean Packman, Child care: needs and numbers, Alien and Unwin). 

The responsibility for a geographically even provision rests with the central govern-) 
ment for it is part of the very essence of a democracy that the services it can provide 
should exist in reality for all citizens. The social work professional associations 
;an do much to help by encouraging their members to recognise this need for an 
!Yen service and by working with local and central government to devise effectivd 
;chemes that will help to spread our scarce supply of social workers across the 
;ountry, as in fact bhe medical profession has very greatly succeeded in improving 
ihe distribution of doctors in general practice. 

tgitation and responsibility 

·' Every social worker is almost certain to be a'lso an agitator. If he or she learns 
;ocial facts and believes that they are due to certain causes which are beyond the 
Jower of an individual to remove, it is impossrble to rest contented with the limite4 \ 
tmount of good that can be done by following old methods and agitation to get 
Jeople to see a new point of view." These words were written in 1920 in a book 
mtitled The Social Worker by Clement Attlee, then a lecturer in socia1 administra.
ion at the London School of Economics. This emphasis on the responsibilities of 
.he social worker for social reform were of course written before psychoanalysis 

lid so much to neutralise the profession's social conscience. 

!\n increasing stress on the need for social reform and social action is appearing] 

n much social work today, although often in the face of vigorous opposition. As'l 

!\ttlee went on to say, "The word ' agitator' is distrustful to many; it calls up a 


picture of a person who is rather unbalanced, honest perhaps, but wrongheaded, 
possibly dishonest, troubling the waters with a view to fishing in them for his own 
benefit. This is mainly the point of view of the person who is on the whole contented 
with things as they are ..." 

A persistent and searching attitude will involve the social worker constantly 
in the whole debate about what sort of society we want. What do we mean by 
democracy and participation? What are rights and needs-how are they published · 
and provided or recognised and met? How do we open up, rather than close, 
channels of communication not just between agencies under the cure-all term of 
"co-ordination " but between citizens, consumers and providers, between and 
among the professions, between the rich and the poor? Social workers cannot 
opt out of this continuing debate. By ignoring such questions, they will only help 
to preserve existing divisions within society and may well promote new ones. 
These are the issues which in the end must dominate the discussion over policy. 
Basically, I am arguing that social workers in our social services today must accept 

~a greater responsibility for the significance of their actions in a society characterised 
by persistent or even increasing inequality for many groups. No social worker can 
be neutral in his or her daily actions: if he believes he can be, then he is simply · 
acquiescing, as Attlee said, in "things as they are." 

A government, especially a Labour one, should be prepared to accept a responsibility 
to support and encourage social work of the types I have suggested. The 
government and the social work professions must recognise that the skills of social

1 

workers should be attuned to the needs of the citizens, and not, as seems to have 

r happened so often, the citizens' needs be redefined to fit the social workers' own 
special concerns, or departments' own convenient administrative pigeonholes. 
The immediate and persistent objectives of policy must be to make the knowledge 
and skills of a more socially-oriented social work profession more available to the 
/community, both by increasing the accessibility of social workers and by sharing 
1some of their work and knowledge with others in the community. Redeployment 
of scarce resources, support and substitution with other workers and a better 
/ distribution of these services throughout society are essential if social work is to 
play a significant role in modern, industrialised society. 

(fhe social worker's responsibility is heavy. He has to act as interpreter and 
mediator for the citizen, as the reporter of social needs, the worker on the spot who 
is able to alert administrators and policy makers to the appearance of new problems 
and the resurgence of old ones. If he is not prepared to accept this role, then the 
poor, the weak, the helpless and their families and children must bear the costs, 
pnce more, silently and invisibly. 


fabian society 


The Fabian Society exists to further 
socialist education and research. It is 
affiliated to the Labour Party, both nationally 
and locally, and embraces all 
shades of Socialist opinion within its 
ranks-left, right and centre. 

Since 1884 the Fabian Society has enrolled 
thoughtful socialists who are prepared 
tb discuss the essential questions 
of democratic socialism and relate them 
to practical plans for building socialism 
in a changing world. 

Beyond this the Society has no collective 
policy. It puts forward no resolutions of 
a political character, but it is not an 
organisation of armchair socialists. Its 
members are active in their Labour 
Parties, Trade Unions and Co-operatives. 
They are representative of the 
labour movement, practical people concerned 
to study and discuss problems 
that matter. 

The Society is organised nationally and 
locally. The national Society, directed 
' by an elected Executive Committee, 
publishes pamphlets, and holds schools 
and conferences of many kinds. Local 
Societies-there are some 80 of them-
are self governing and are lively centres 
of discussion and also undertake re


search. 

Enquiries about membership should be 
sent to the General Secretary, Fabian 
Society, 11 Dartmouth Street, London. 
SW!; telephone 01-930 3077. 

the author 

Adrian Sinfield is lecturer in sociology 
at the University of Essex. He is consultant 
on the long-term unemployed 
to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation 
and Development in Paris 
and for the past four years has been an 
assessor for the Council in Training for 
Social Work, although of course the 
opinions expressed here are his personal 
ones. 

He is very grateful to the many people 
who have commented upon or discussed 
an earlier version of this pamphlet and 
he would particularly like to thank 
Rosalind Brooke, Joyce Capper, KayCarmichael, Barbara Goodfellow, Alan 
Lawson, Dennis Marsden, Rosemary 
Ridgen, Ann Tilt, Noel Timms and 
Peter Townsend. None of these however 
should be held responsible for the 
views expressed in the pamphlet. Susan 
Best and Barbara Warner swiftly and 
competently typed the original draft 
and the final revisions. 

Cover design and typography byGeoffrey Cannon. Printed by Civic 
Press Limited (Tu). Civic Street, 
Glasgow, C4. 

SBN 7163 0393 0 



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