ABSTRACT
The central point to be made in this chapter is that caseworkers need, but do not possess, an adequate moral and social theory. A moral theory is required in order to understand and assess the nature and status of certain principles which enter into the practice of casework, and to understand the kinds of justification which can be given to these principles: principles such as ‘respect for persons’, ‘individualization’, ‘self-direction’ and ‘acceptance’. A social philosophy is needed in order to become clear about the relationship between the individuals who are approached by caseworkers in terms of these principles, and ‘objective’ social morality, the impersonal set of norms and standards which are attached to the social roles in which an individual performs, and to which the social worker seeks to help him to come to terms. Caseworkers operate in that conceptual quagmire, the relationship between the individual and society. It may be argued that this way of presenting the problem is not a useful one (Williams, 1965), but it is certainly a dichotomy in terms of which some casework theorists see the subject. Pollard (1962, p. 8) writes:
The tension between the ‘one and the many’ in social work presents so complex a problem that the profession can hardly, so it seems, develop their study of its two poles simultaneously. On the one hand there is the individual who, basically, cannot be helped against his real wish…and on the other hand there is society, chiefly embodied in the agency, which is part of the reality of the client’s situation even in cases where the issues are mainly psychological.
