Social Work Function in a Caring Society: Abstract Value, Professional Preference, and the Real World

Abstract

Abstract Social work, in its search for a professional foundation, has lost sight of its original social purpose, the need to take care to the weak and helpless groups in a new industrializing society: the severely disabled, neglected children, mentally ill, developmentally disabled, and the enfeebled aged. No other profession is qualified to, or seeks to satisfy this need. This article discusses how the profession could fulfill this social function as a base for its growth, adding other therapeutic, preventive, and social change functions as experimental frontiers rooted in a socially sanctioned foundation available to few other professions.