Developments in Education for Social Work

By 1950 modern social work education (i.e. the application of theory in practice, learning how to make knowledge operational) had barely started, except in the mental health courses, and later only spread slowly. In the social work field as a whole in the 1950s, few people had any training, largely because no opportunities then existed apart from the small intake on social science university courses, the mental health, medical social work, child care, probation, and moral welfare trainings and various ad hoc specialised short courses, for instance for NSPCC inspectors or home teachers of the blind. The foundations of social work education had to be laid against many odds, and social work teachers faced conflicts in both the universities and the fieldwork agencies at a time when they themselves were struggling to discover a new identity.