Social Work and Welfare in the 1920s

1
Social Work and Welfare in the 1920s
2
Historical Background

• Americans in WW I from July 1917 until end in
  November 1918
• 4.8 million soldiers mobilized, 117, 000 killed
  and 204,000 wounded

3

• KKK founded in 1915 with 4.5 million members in
  mid 20s
• 1919 Constitutional amendment requiring
  prohibition ratified
• 1920 Constitutional amendment allowing women to
  vote ratified

4
Consumer and Business Culture

• Buy, buy, buy rise of advertising
• Speculation on the stock market
• Stock prices went up tremendously during the
  1920s
• Lots of people were getting rich based on the
  value of their stocks and bonds

5
Social Work Retreated from Social Reform

• Moved to consideration of ego strengths and
  weaknesses
• Casework became dominant
• Mary Richmond wrote Social Diagnosis (1917)
• Focus on investigation of individuals problems
• Based on medical model

6
Trattners Comments on Social Diagnosis

• Not influenced by Freud
• Richmond believe casework was related to research
  and reform, but thought reform had failed
• She believed treatment was as important as
  diagnosis

7
Social Diagnosis Response to Abraham Flexner

• Speech at 1915 National Conference said social
  work not yet a profession
• Response was that a technique was necessary
• diagnosis seemed professional
• Caseworkers employed by American Red Cross helped
  non-poor as well as poor

8
Smith College

• Established psychiatric social work to work with
  mental patients
• Psychoanalysis becoming popularized in 1920s
• Freudian ideas gave theoretical base and
  scientific method
• Childhood experiences and emotions shape
  personality and behavior of adults

9
Changed from Charity to Poor to Therapy

• Maladjustment problem with upper classes as well
• Increased status of profession
• Reduced reform and humanitarian thrust
• Poor seen as responsible for problems in roaring
  20s

10
Importance of Agency Admin and Fund Raising

• War chests developed to community chests
• Federated funding - forerunner to United Way
• Institutionalized anti-reform sentiments
• In the prosperity decade, many thought social
  reform was unnecessary

11
Social Works Themes in the 20s

• Professionalism
• Psychiatry
• Psychoanalysis
• Also beginning to see family counseling, habit
  clinics, child guidance, adjustment problems
• Psychiatric social worker the ideal

12
Social Work Education

• Included Freudian concepts such as defense
  mechanisms, transference, ego strengths, Oedipus
  complex
• Focus was on helping clients become adjusted to
  their environments, NOT on reforming ills of
  society
• Also it seemed like social workers were junior
  psychiatrists, not professionals on their own