Modern social work is a very professional and respected career path. A social worker needs at least 4 years of education through an accredited social work college program through the Council on Social Work Education. Many social workers usually continue through more years of education to get their master’s degree or a social work licensure, which takes at least 2 years of further education with training as well. Social work did not begin like it is now with academics and formal training. Several people over several years advocated for the professionalism of social work to make the career more standardized and efficient. The first person who advocated for such is often referred as being Mary Richmond. She worked for the Charity Organization
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I had learned and researched the topic starting with what I remember from the class and supporting it with the textbook, An Introduction to Social Work, written by Cox and other contributors. I was interested in learning how the COS worked and started the development of the social work occupation. I had remembered COS employees were volunteer-based, but the responsibility of a social worker became more career-focused and professional eventually. I wanted to know how this shift happened, and why there was a need for more trained professionals. To further my research, I looked up the first book about social case work written in 1917 about Mary Richmond, and I also found another book she wrote in 1922 about the same topic again. These two books are primary sources from the time that when the social work career was developing and becoming more focused on expertise and training. I also found more information about Mary Richmond in a secondary source article describing her life and achievement. The work Richmond did initiated a major shift in the social work field between volunteerism which was performed by the COS employees and professionalism of trained social workers. Those values are significantly different and are important for social workers in training to …show more content…
According to the textbook by Cox, the Charity Organization Society was the beginning of the social work profession. The Society moved to the United States from Britain in the late 1870’s, and employed volunteers to work for the society, called “friendly visitors,” that offered moral support and advice to the families they were assigned to offer their services to. There was no training needed by the friendly workers, they were only required to be committed to the assigned families they worked with. The society and its volunteers did offer some relief to its clients, but many people found the system inefficient . Friendly workers had no proper skills needed for their job because of the little training they had, and the services they offered were amateur and had a limited impact on clients. Eventually Cox describes there was a need for trained individuals in the society, called “agents.” People like Edward T. Devine and Mary Richmond pushed for this to change and make friendly workers into agents that were more educated and trained in an academic world. This is often referred to as the beginning of the social work profession , shifting to professionalism instead of volunteerism was the major stepping point that changed the
I had learned and researched the topic starting with what I remember from the class and supporting it with the textbook, An Introduction to Social Work, written by Cox and other contributors. I was interested in learning how the COS worked and started the development of the social work occupation. I had remembered COS employees were volunteer-based, but the responsibility of a social worker became more career-focused and professional eventually. I wanted to know how this shift happened, and why there was a need for more trained professionals. To further my research, I looked up the first book about social case work written in 1917 about Mary Richmond, and I also found another book she wrote in 1922 about the same topic again. These two books are primary sources from the time that when the social work career was developing and becoming more focused on expertise and training. I also found more information about Mary Richmond in a secondary source article describing her life and achievement. The work Richmond did initiated a major shift in the social work field between volunteerism which was performed by the COS employees and professionalism of trained social workers. Those values are significantly different and are important for social workers in training to …show more content…
According to the textbook by Cox, the Charity Organization Society was the beginning of the social work profession. The Society moved to the United States from Britain in the late 1870’s, and employed volunteers to work for the society, called “friendly visitors,” that offered moral support and advice to the families they were assigned to offer their services to. There was no training needed by the friendly workers, they were only required to be committed to the assigned families they worked with. The society and its volunteers did offer some relief to its clients, but many people found the system inefficient . Friendly workers had no proper skills needed for their job because of the little training they had, and the services they offered were amateur and had a limited impact on clients. Eventually Cox describes there was a need for trained individuals in the society, called “agents.” People like Edward T. Devine and Mary Richmond pushed for this to change and make friendly workers into agents that were more educated and trained in an academic world. This is often referred to as the beginning of the social work profession , shifting to professionalism instead of volunteerism was the major stepping point that changed the