ABSTRACT
We are perhaps almost too used to clichés about rapid social change to be really aware of its wider significance. In the rapid social change produced by technology we are drastically altering the time spans of social relationships without knowing the consequences or how to control them, nor indeed knowing very much at all about the life history of these relations between man and his human and physical environment. There is another aspect of social change which is also of great significance to social workers. It is significant that professional social work from its early beginnings in the last century has probably been more concerned with freedom of choice than with anything else. Social work is also closely involved with social pathology. Social work can proudly claim that it was deeply involved long before professional social work began to develop.
