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9 Int'l Soc. Work 1 (1966)

handle is hein.journals/intsocwk9 and id is 1 raw text is: A COMPARATIVE VIEW OF MANPOWER PROBLEMS: THE BRITISH APPROACH Eileen L. Younghusband, D.B.E.* O NE of the queerest things about human nature is the amount of solace we derive from discovering that our problems and disabilities also afflict others. In the United Kingdom, as in the United States there is a manpower crisis in social work; or, more accurately, we also have been hit by a manpower crisis in social work. The thing that has puzzled me is that the short- age itself has been there all the time. The crisis is not in the situation but in our changed perception of the situation. Neither the United Kingdom nor the United States had enough social workers to man the public or private social agencies when they were much less extensive than they are now, but we have just accepted this as a fact of life rather than as a crisis. The Crisis The manpower crisis situation (which has been there all the time) was probably bound to hit us when a number of different factors combined to force it upon our reluctant attention. These eye-openers, if I may so call them, include the expansion of existing social services, coupled with the introduction of new services; the demand for a much higher quality of service, which naturally calls for more - and more skilled - man- power; the growth of the population in the most vulner- able age groups - the old, the young, and the handi- capped. These changes have been occurring at the same time as a general increase in professionalisation, which means that more and more careers are competing for candidates, many of them able to offer higher awards and less blood, tears, toil and sweat than social work. The higher marriage mortality rate also means that women are spending a shorter time in their pro- fessional careers before they marry and the children come; and they do not necessarily return to social work later on. There is a considerable difference, organisationally speaking, between social services in the United States and those in the United Kingdom. Another fundamental difference lies in the fact that in the United Kingdom we have no states, only national ministries, together with local authorities carrying out legislation enacted by Parliament. At the same time, the British private agencies are small fry compared with those in the United States. But none of this is really significant in the context because the crisis in both countries seems to be remarkably similar, i.e., there is a wholly inade- quate supply of trained manpower to meet the demand. In both, too, we have relied on university education for social work, and the universities have fallen down on us quantitatively speaking. University education for social work in the United States is very much, better than ours and they are far ahead of us in social work research. But this too does not basically change the situation in regard to manpower. In the early days professional social work developed from within private agencies with limited coverage. These agencies were free to cultivate a small plot with the earnest concentration of a Chinese gardener, leaving the world's wide wilderness outside. By degrees pub- lic services have developed, either giving limited cover- age at a fair standard and then expanding to give universal coverage, or giving universal coverage at a low standard but now endeavouring to raise its quality. At any rate, from whichever angle the extensions came, the real point is that both the United States and the United Kingdom are now attempting to provide uni- versal public services in the general field of social wel- fare. That would be enough in itself, but we have also been forced by the growth of knowledge in the behavioural sciences and by its application in social work and allied fields to realise that the meeting of social need consists not only in conferring certain rights and benefits but also in providing a professional service which in itself is the best way we know to meet the need of people who are troubled and unhappy, dis- turbed, at odds with themselves and with society. All this, too, comes when we have become aware as we never have been before of the extent of human misery caused by emotional conflict or malnutrition. Indeed, we are now appalled by the amount of neurosis, of social squalor, of human waste and tragedy in the world's most affluent societies. If what I have been saying is a correct analysis, then it all adds up to agreement that social workers are as universally needed as doctors, nurses or teachers, and that an untrained social worker must become as much an anachronism as an untrained doctor, nurse or teacher. *Dame Eileen Youn-hushand is President of the International Association of Schools of Social Work and Advisor on Social Work Training. National Institute for Social Work Training, London. This paper was presented at a Manpower Symposium held on April 26, 1965 at the School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago and published in the December. 1965 issue of the Social Sermice Review. It is reprinted here with the permission of the University of Chicago Press which holds the copyright,

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