The Origin, Emergence, and Professional Recognition of Child Protection

Abstract

During the Progressive Era, social workers accustomed to intervening on behalf of children in moral or physical jeopardy fashioned a program of child protection by correcting dangerous community conditions and by engaging culpable parents in social casework. Between the world wars, the social application of authority became the dominant theme of child protection, and casework with abusive and neglectful parents correspondingly became the principal function. Well before the child abuse deluge of the early 1960s, professional social workers realized that neither public nor private agencies could provide child protective services unless staff caseworkers discerned the difficulties and limitations of casework with involuntary clients.