ABSTRACT
Historically, social work, like much other voluntary effort on behalf of one’s neighbour, sprang from the religious motive. Defining ‘social work’ and ‘social worker’ is a common though not very profitable undertaking. It will suffice for the present purpose if we regard the social worker as one who is particularly skilled at understanding and helping individuals or groups who are experiencing conditions of stress and strain which they cannot meet themselves. The social reformers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who worked for the abolition of illiteracy, preventable disease, sweated labour, slums and overcrowding, unemployment and destitution, tended to think that to solve these ills would of itself free men to live happy, self-determining lives with no personal problems which they could not deal with unaided on their own account.
