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11 Int'l Soc. Work 1 (1968)

handle is hein.journals/intsocwk11 and id is 1 raw text is: UNITED KINGDOM EXPERIENCE IN THE EXPANSION Geraldine Aves, C.B.E.* IF change is the outstanding characteristic of the period in which we live - in science and tech- nological advance, in politics and in cultural patterns - it is certainly equally true in the United Kingdom of the framework against which social work is prac- tised and social workers are trained. Frankly, in the years between the wars we stagnated, in spite of transatlantic encouragement to improve our teach- ing and our practice in terms of casework and the influence of psychiatry. The second World War gave us a good jolt, but after it for the first few years we were so occupied with the creation and adminis-, tration of new services in the realms of health, education, child care and social security that insuffi- cient thought and resources were devoted to questions of recruitment and training of the requisite staff. For too long we tried to make do with the numerically totally inadequate products of university courses which, to a minimal extent, supplemented in the public services the great majority of workers qualified only by experience or by wholly outdated public assist- ance credentials. To this the new Child Care Service for children deprived of normal home life was an honourable exception, to the extent that the need for trained staff both for field work and in residen- tial settings was recognized from its inception. Steps were taken to provide specialized training courses from 1947 onwards through a Central Training Coun- cil in Child Care. A Climate of Change It is now a matter of history - I believe, of international history - that the Working Party on Social Workers in the Health & Welfare Departments of Local Authorities, set up by the Health Ministers and presided over by Eileen Younghusband, first shook us effectively out of our rut.' The Younghusband Re- port, published in 1959, caused us to face our limit- ations, to recognize the need to provide trained staff throughout the local authority service and to this end to set up new training programmes outside the univer- sities. The sequel to that Report, which received overwhelming support for ifs recommendations from bodies concerned with social work education, with social services in their different statutory and volun- tary settings and from professional associations, forms the main substance of this address. It must however be said that the impact of the Report was far wider than the health and welfare field. In particular, its pleas for closer liaison between social services, and for the deployment of staff to meet the needs of given family or individual situations instead of being restricted by administrative departmental boundaries had strong implications for separately administered services like child care, as well as for others, like the probation service, which were not a local authority responsibility. Nevertheless, I propose to refer mainly to its effect on the local authority health and welfare services. * Miss Ayes, formerly Chief Welfore Officer in the Ministry of Health, Britain, is a member of the British Council for Training in Social Work and a Governor of the Notional Institute for Social Work Training. Her paper was presented at a Conference on Manpower Needs and Education in the Field of Social Welfare convened in Ottowo, Canada, in November, 1966. Permission has been granted to reprint this article by the Association of Universities and Colleges of Conada which produced the Proceedings of the Conference under the title, Manpower Needs in the Field of Social Welfare (Ottawa, 1967). 1 Report of the Working Party on Social Workers in the Local Authority Health and Wetfare Services (London : H.M.S.O., 1959).

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