It’s 1976, and I begin work as a social worker: #2 in a series

 

One Monday morning in the early autumn of 1976 I turned up for work at Charwood Social Services Department, along with 3 other people who had also succeeded in getting jobs as unqualified social workers in Charwood.

Social services functioned very differently 45 years ago. In 1974, only two years before I started work as a social worker, there had been a huge national reorganisation of social care provision, precipitated by the Local Authority Social Services Act 1970. This in turn had been inspired by the Seebohm Report, published in July 1968, which had proposed the integration of disparate social care services into single, generic departments overseen by local authority social services departments.

Until then, social care had been administered in a range of guises. For example, mental health had Mental Welfare Officers, defined by the Mental Health Act 1959. Services for children and families had Children’s Officers. Hospital social work was done by Hospital Almoners. In 1974, all these people were moved into these generic departments, and all became known as “social workers”.

This video discusses the impact of these changes.