ABSTRACT
Some social workers in the field work defined social work as the casework relationship, some students saw social work as 'sticking plaster - act as sticking plaster without actually tackling and doing something'. 'Welfare rights' has been used to describe a wide range of activities as well as a set of ideas. Holman defines the concept quite narrowly as being 'the entitlement of low income persons to statutory, financial or material provision of services', whereas Cohen and Rushton widen it to include the action of advocacy which they define as 'acting on a client's behalf and representing her interests to outside organisations'. The relationship between social work and poverty appears to have been influenced by three main factors: the philosophy and practises of the Charity Organisation Society (COS); the need for an emerging profession to identify with other more powerful professions, in this case psychiatry, and the administrative and bureaucratic development of the casework model.
