Significant Contributions of Men and Women in the Historical Foundation of Casework

1. MARY RICHMOND

Mary Richmond is known as the founder of social case work. While social casework was a primary method of intervention, it was not until Mary Richmond published Social Diagnosis in 1917 that a formal definition for social casework began to formulate. In Social Diagnosis, Richmond advocated for working with clients, rather than on them, and for gaining "sympathetic understanding of the old world backgrounds from which the client came" in lieu of making generalizations or assumptions.

2. EDWARD DEVINE

After earning a PhD in economics in 1919, Edward Devine took what he had learned and applied it to the burgeoning field of social work. Early in his career, he focused his efforts on children's welfare and on housing for the poor. While serving as president of New York City's Charity Organization Society, he assigned volunteers to act as agents. These professionals are widely regarded as being pre-cursors to modern-day social workers. Devine also left his mark by being the first to use the term "case work," which is also where the term "case worker" originated.

3. HELEN HARRIS PERLMAN

Helen Harris Perlman was the Samuel Deutsch Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. She was considered a pioneer in social work education. Perlman, with almost seventy years as a social work practitioner, supervisor, teacher, consultant, and author to her credit, was a legend in her field. Perlman’s areas of study included ego psychology and its implications for clinical work; lifetime personality growth and development resulting from a person’s daily transactions at work, at home, and in society; therapeutic and educational problem-solving processes; and how social values and value conflicts affect future planning. She also taught social casework: its governing principles, ethics, values, and methods of helping and enabling people suffering from stress, disability, and other social or psychological problems. She is also considered as the originator of the problem-solving framework in social work which has greatly influenced social work thinking. In her book, Social Casework: A Problem-Solving Process, she describes the social work process as a progressive transaction between the professional helper and the client.

4. FLORENCE HOLLIS

Florence Hollis attended Smith College School for Social Work, where she studied casework. After graduation, she became district secretary at the Institute of Family Service (Associated Charities) in Cleveland, where she was responsible for administration and supervision of case workers. She was also a member of the Cleveland 'think group'. In 1964, Hollis’s widely acclaimed book Casework: A Psychosocial Therapy was published. As a full professor at the New York School, Hollis also remained active in research. Beginning in the late 1940s she started to develop ideas for a classification system used to describe the techniques used by caseworkers in their direct work with clients, and during a 1958 sabbatical the work began to take on a definite shape. The classification system or “typology” she developed was based on a content analysis of casework records both written and taped. In Thelma Lee Mendoza's known 'Orange Book', Florence Hollis' casework process in problem-solving was shared: (1) Defining the general nature of the problem presented; (2) Psychological study; (3) Diagnosis and formulation of treatment plans; and (4)Treatment; and (5) Evaluation.

Other authors have come out clearly with their objections to the separate methods of casework, group work, and community organization. These people are as follows:

5. HERBERT BISNO

Herbert Bisno is a professor of sociology and social welfare and was chairman of Community Service Programs. In place of the casework-group work-community organization model of practice, Bisno offers a conceptualization consisting of nine social work methods which may be utilized with any client system - individual, group or community. These nine methods are the following: Adversary, Conciliatory, Developmental, Facilitative-Instructional, Knowledge Development and Testing, Restorative, Regulatory, Rule-Implementing, and Rule Making.

6. BEULAH COMPTON

Beulah Compton's respected problem-solving model for social work has long been a standard in the field. Beulah Compton, with co-author Burt Galaway, has updated their comprehensive model to address such timely issues as advocacy, case management, health maintenance organizations, and community work. Compton taught in the areas of disorganized families, the middle-aged, education in social work, and family therapy.

7. BURTON GALAWAY

He was the founder and president of the Professional Association of Treatment Homes (PATH), a nonprofit organization that focused on a more personalized approach to foster care for children with special needs. He earned his B.A. in sociology from Nebraska Wesleyan University in 1959 and joined the faculty of the School of Social Development at the University of Minnesota, Duluth in 1974 and later returned to the staff of the School of Social Work, at the Twin Cities campus.

Compton and Galaway have additional objections to the casework-group work-community organization model. According to them, a refinement of the traditional model of methods is the micro-macro conceptualization of social work practice, which they see as having the same shortcomings as the casework-group work-community organization model over which it is supposed to be an improvement.

Our discussion of social work practice therefore will be organized and guided not only by our desire to avoid the objections we have just presented, but more importantly, by our desire to present what we believe is a minimum competence for working with Filipino clients. In doing this, we want to point out that we have as frame of reference the reality that the Filipino client is a multi-problem client, which therefore rules out a fragmented approach to problem-solving.