ABSTRACT
IN this chapter two contrasting aspects of the history of the Association will be discussed; the attempts to influence legislation and policy and the work of attending to the welfare of members. The Association began as a ‘promotional’ group, 1 concerned not with salaries and negotiation, but with advancing the cause of mental hygiene. It soon became interested in salaries, but the force of conviction placed behind negotiations was often weak. It took the Association many years before it could admit freely to being a ‘sectional’ group concerned with the economic interest and vocation of its members. Early discussions of methods of spreading knowledge of psychiatric social work were, for example, seen by many members as ‘propaganda’, and the dangers of such ‘unprofessional’ behaviour were stressed. Now the Association pursues salary negotiations with some vigour and a very high proportion of its members are members of N.A.L.G.O. Some of the older members consider that the younger sections of the Association are concerned only with the ‘trade union’ aspects of the life of the Association. It is to be hoped that these two aspects of the Association, the vocational and the sectional, can be combined, but any attempt to give them equal emphasis must be based on a realization of the ways in which policy and legislation are in fact influenced, and of the pressures brought about by the attempt to play the roles of ‘reformer’ and ‘therapist’.
