Social Work and Social Research

Various studies in psychology, sociology and criminology in these decades added greater precision either to knowledge or ignorance about personal and social functioning, although these studies were at different levels of abstraction or based upon different theoretical concepts and thus difficult to co-ordinate in specific social work practice. There was often failure to take the crucial next step of testing and incorporating relevant findings and concepts in social work or social agency practice, and so enlarging the boundaries of practice by more flexible, imaginative, objective and evaluated use of knowledge or hypotheses. Unfortunately, there was no planned endeavour by selected social agencies to test findings systematically and make the results generally available.