Introduction

Training for psychiatric social work consisted of a year’s professional course at a university given normally to those who had experience of social work and also a university qualification in social science. In the treatment of the maladjusted child psychiatric social workers have played an essential part in the establishment and development of the child guidance service. Social workers have not been alone in expressing criticism of their colleagues in psychiatric social work, but the main burden of their complaint has been that the psychiatric social worker is engulfed in purely psychoanalytic understanding and techniques. The field of psychiatric social work provides an exceptionally strong vantage point from which social work developments as a whole can be surveyed. A study of psychiatric social work has a special relevance at the present time in view of the increasing importance being given to our social policy in regard to the mentally ill.