Some Professional Associations in Social Work

In the early 1950s the most influential professional associations were the long-established Institute of Almoners (later the Institute of Medical Social Workers (IMSW), the Association of Psychiatric Social Workers (APSW) and the National Association of Probation Officers (NAPO). They continued to struggle for recognition of their distinct professional expertise and raise standards of practice, within the health service where the primary function was medical or the penal system where it and social work were sometimes at odds. By the early 1950s three child care associations, the Association of Children’s Officers (ACO), the Association of Child Care Officers (ACCO) and the Residential Child Care Association (RCCA), had come on the scene with the birth of the child care service. They all grew rapidly in membership and effectiveness, with influential annual conferences, fact-finding studies and close relations with the Home Office and local authority associations. Indeed, the quality of the new child care service - professionally, administratively and in the collection of evidence on which new legislation was based - owed a great deal to them: as did developments in the probation service to NAPO and the Conference of Principal Probation Officers.