ABSTRACT
The past five years have seen great changes in social work. First, a large number of separate organizations of social workers, originally formed round groups of clients whose common identity rested upon definitions in statutes at least as much as on any skilled definition of need, became more and more aware that both their skills and their problems had much in common. They realized also that specialisms might more appropriately be developed within a combined profession than by continuing the largely arbitrary distinctions that accidents of history had hitherto defined. Second, as a consequence of this growing realization of common interests, social workers began to define more clearly than before those aspects of society’s behaviour and problems that were most appropriately to be dealt with primarily by specialists possessing social work skills (this activity led both to the formulation of extravagant claims by social workers and the creation of large counter-claims from other professions working in the same or related fields). Third, in addition to the specification of some types of problems as belonging primarily to social work, a subtler claim was introduced. This was that since the terms of reference of every other local authority department, and indeed of other professions, were fairly precisely defined there was left an ill-defined but highly significant residue concerned with the general well-being of individuals and of the community as a whole. In accepting this large claim, the government was bound to impose some limitations, but the famous Section 12 of the Social Work (Scotland) Act, 1968, comes as close to creating a ‘Ministry of Happiness’ or what Trist (1967), following Frank, would call a ‘Service State’ as any government could be expected to risk.
