Social Casework History & Individualization

• Social casework, as a social work intervention, was introduced in the Philippines by early Americans.
• Americans developed social casework from charity work to friendly visiting, then to social work.
• The evolution of social casework can be traced back to early Christian charity reformers.

Individualization

• Juan Luis de Vives, a Spanish philosopher in 16th-century Belgium, advocated for individual attention to the poor.
• De Vives believed donors should be concerned with the well-being of each poor individual.
• He proposed investigating social conditions of pauper families to determine specific needs and providing vocational training, employment, and other rehabilitative services.
• His recommendations were ignored due to the Counter-Reformation in Spain, where charitable acts remained steeped in old traditions.

Personal Neighboring Aid

• Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847), a Scottish minister, introduced personal, parochial relief based on neighborly aid in the 19th century.
• Chalmers advocated handling each case of destitution individually, investigating the cause of distress before offering solutions.
• He emphasized the importance of personal interest in the individual's fate to ensure their rehabilitation and upliftment.

Charity Organization Societies (COS) of England

• Charity workers in England adopted individualization and personal, neighborly aid from Chalmers.
• The London COS, organized in 1869, implemented a relief program based on Chalmers' ideas, laying groundwork for casework.
• The COS established a policy of extending help on a case-by-case basis, depending on individual circumstances.
• The COS encouraged private charities, volunteer donations, and recruited well-to-do volunteers as moral role models to aid poor families.
• Nineteenth-century charity workers believed poverty was due to weak moral character, unlike today's understanding of systemic causes.
• Volunteers were directed to ensure paupers utilized their abilities and to exert moral influence to change attitudes and behavior.
• One objective of casework was to change the client's attitude and behavior within a given situation.
• The COS introduced friendly visitors for investigations, coordinated services among relief organizations, eliminated fraudulent setups, prevented duplicated support, and strengthened rehabilitation.

Charity Organization Societies (COS) of the United States

• COS were established in US cities and towns starting in 1870s to reform public relief administration.
• The goal of COS was to organize relief efforts and coordinate among relief sources, advocating for private and religious organizations to handle relief.
• American charity workers improved on English ideas by establishing a separate function: the helping process.
• The helping process involved registration, investigation, cooperation, and friendly visiting.

The Friendly Visitor

• The friendly visitor was the American pre-caseworker, visiting families to determine the need for relief.
• Relief given only after verification of need.
• The friendly visitor emphasized friendship, which evolved into the professional client-worker relationship based on mutual trust and rapport.

Family-Centered Casework

• In the early 1900s, the individual was approached as a member of a family.
• The COS aimed to foster self-reliance, directing efforts to educate family members and introduce self-help activities.
• The objectives of family-centered casework investigation were to learn the "disease" (social ailment) and discover strengths for family recovery.

COS Contributions

• The COS played a major role in developing social casework as a social work method by the 20th century.
• The organization emphasized thorough investigation, family agencies, and professional training for caseworkers.

The Scientific Approach to Casework

• Mary Richmond defined social casework as gathering social evidence, social diagnosis, and treatment.
• In 1898, Richmond established the Training School for Applied Philanthropy in New York, which became the prototype for social work schools.

Other Developments

• Casework evolved from charity work and grew with World War I and II due to veterans' emotional problems.
• This increased the demand for psychiatric social workers.
• The need for follow-up care for medical patients led to medical social workers.

Behavioral Concepts

• Freudian and Rankan concepts influenced the psychological method of helping.
• Emphasis shifted to ego psychology.

Organismic Approach

• The organismic approach, emphasized by Gordon Hamilton, focuses on the total organization of an organism with its interrelated factors, rather than individual parts.
• Gordon drew attention to the person-in-situation, multiple causality, and growth, advocating for client engagement in change.
• These concepts underlie present-day social casework.

Casework in the Philippines

• Casework was introduced in the Philippines around the 1920s by Josefa Jara Martinez.
• In 1921, Martinez became the first Filipino executive director of the Association Charities of Manila, promoting community involvement.
• Martinez supervised volunteer home visitors, initiating them in casework procedures advocated by Mary Richmond.
• Social casework may have appeared in 1915 in childcare institutions and public assistance and medical settings.

Medical and Psychiatric Social Work

• In 1915, the first social services unit was organized at the Philippine General Hospital.
• Psychiatric social work practice was established in 1926 at the National Psychiatric Hospital.
• In 1949, a medical social services was created in San Lazaro Hospital, patterned after the Almoner Service in England.
• Republic Act No. 747 in 1962 based medical assistance eligibility on living standards.
• A 1964 circular established medical social worker positions in hospitals, promoting social work in medical settings.
• In the 1970s, casework practice became more identified with juvenile delinquents and drug dependents.

Reexamination of Casework

• Since the 1960s, there's been a trend to adapt social work practice to Philippine social problems.
• The 1962 Pan-Pacific Conference in Manila discussed the applicability of American and English social work methods.
• The 1965 Fifth National Conference of Social Work focused on challenges to social work in the Philippines.
• The Schools of Social Work Association of the Philippines (SSWAP) held six national workshops.

Casework Literature

• There is a lack of casework material, mostly available in mimeographed form for teaching and training.
• Two books were published with UNICEF/DSW assistance: "Social Work Practice" by Hebbert, Paras, and Viloria, and "The Filipino Family in Crisis: Ten Case Studies" by Jamias, Serafica, and Varias. In 1979, the Philippine Association of Social Workers conducted a case study contest, and the three winning entries were published in the Social Work Journal.

Definitions

• The Philippine Encyclopedia of Social Work defines social casework as helping people cope with personal problems involving impaired social functioning.
• Kazuko Kay defines casework as intervening in psycho-social aspects to restore, improve, and develop social functioning.
• It's a problem-solving and helping process, enhancing role performance, and preventing malfunctioning.
• Esther Viloria defines social casework as a helping process with various activities including material assistance, referrals, emotional support, advice, and encouragement.
• Definitions agree that social casework is a social work method to help individuals with social functioning problems.
• It's both a helping and problem-solving process with the goal of improving role performance.
• It involves activities like material assistance, emotional, and psychological support.